Mini Clubman - what is that?

So,we were almost ready to pick out the options on our spanking new Mini Cooper S and Ashish, a friend of mine and a serious car enthusiast, who knew about our Mini affinity, emailed me and told me that there is a newer, bigger version of the Mini Cooper - The Mini Clubman which will start shipping in 2008.

Dang, back to research on miniusa.com. Mini had very little info about the car, but none of the dealers had it. Looked up some other websites, which had spy shots of the car. The Clubman looked cool. It had 2 rear barn doors and also a club door on the passenger side, for easier access for the rear seats. It was also longer by 10 inches and wider by another 6 or so, compared to its predecessor. Any extra room, would help I thought. Right?

We didnt want to decide on it, wihtout actually looking at it. We were almost ready to give up on the clubman and move on, but then it struck me. The SF auto show was going to be in town. After calling several dealers, if they're going to show the Clubman on the floor, and not getting any response back, I called the auto show organisers to no avail.

Finally jumped on a few mini forums, to confirm that infact the SF show will have a clubman for display!! Cool!
picked a weekday, and did an early morning run to SF with Sumati and Rishon. Took a good peek at the clubman. It looked quite cool and nice. The space was definitely going to be useful.

Unable to decide, we decided to sit on it for a day or two. Oh, given that my son has become a car freak, it was almost impossible to get him out of the car show. He kept running towards every brand like a maniac. He insisted we sit in a few - so we sat in a Lexus GS300, a Land Rover and a Ford Mustang.

I started calling the dealers for quotes/timelines on the Clubman. Looks like there's a hype about this and all dealers are charging a $3K premium on it. In addition to it, the car itself cost another extra $3k than the regular Mini. And they couldnt guarantee a timeline at which they could get the car. April, May, may be? And $6k definitely didnt look worth the small space increase.

Screw you all, we're going back to Plan A.