BMW Neue Klasse X revealed, 2025 Mini Countryman JCW and SE driven | Autoblog Podcast #824

In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski. In the news, BMW revealed the Neue Klasse X EV, Jeep Wrangler drops the V8, Ford Mustang gets a 810-horsepower supercharger kit and Shell leans into EV charging. We look back on the life and designs of Marcello Gandini. We discuss the various automatic shifters that are now on the market. We talk about driving the Mercedes-Benz CLA, as well as the 2025 Mini Countryman JCW and the electric Countryman SE. Finally, we help a listener pick a newish truck or SUV for around $40,000 in this week's "Spend My Money" segment.

Send us your questions for the Mailbag and Spend My Money at: Podcast@Autoblog.com.

Video Transcript

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GREG MIGLIORE: Welcome back to "The Autoblog Podcast." I'm Greg Migliore. We've got a great show for you this week. We're to talk about the BMW Neue Klasse. Stick around. We'll break that down, if you're curious, how I just slipped into German. We'll tell you what that is. And it's definitely pretty cool.

It's the end of the road for the V8 and the Wrangler. Jeep will celebrate with a special edition for the 392 on its way out. We're going to supercharge the Mustang. Well, we're not going to. But there's a factory-backed kit that will make it comparable with some Hellcats. There's some fighting words.

We'll talk about some of the latest news from the EV world. That's the best way to boil that down. And Marcello Gandini dies at 85. We'll talk about some of his most memorable designs. We road tested the Mercedes CLA 250 4MATIC and the MINI Countryman JCW and the EV. We will spend your money.

A few other surprises will probably drop into the show if we have time. With that, I will bring in senior editor for all things consumer, Jeremy Korzeniewski.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Howdy, Greg. I'm happy to be here. Happy to talk about muscle cars, overpowered Jeeps, and European classics.

GREG MIGLIORE: I like it. Actually, that's a pretty good way to summarize the intro. Maybe that's what I should have said right off the top. But now you've got the long and short version. So you can jump around in the show, figure out what you want to listen to. Yeah, man. Last time I talked to you on the show, it was, like, I think, kind of warm out. It's snowing right now. It feels like hardcore winter again.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: It's been so weird here in the Midwest. Like, looking out in my yard, it's funny to see that literally everything is in bloom. Magnolia trees in my neighborhood are, like, 3/4 of the way through their only bloom session of the year. And yet there's snow falling. So yeah, welcome to springtime in the Midwest.

GREG MIGLIORE: Welcome to springtime in the Midwest. We'll see. Last year, we had a very cold April. It didn't really warm up until May.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: But then when it did--

GREG MIGLIORE: So we'll see.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: --it really overcompensated because it--

GREG MIGLIORE: That's true.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: --got hot and humid. So I'll take a slow, gradual, like, move into summertime. That would be fine with me.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. It doesn't seem to be the-- it's, like, you know, tidal waves hitting each other. And then we get eventually to the other side. So--

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: There you go.

GREG MIGLIORE: --we shall see. Neue class. People have probably been wondering, what is this thing? You went to Europe. It's been a few weeks at this point, almost probably over a month. You got to see it. Your story, of course, is on site. Let's break it down. What is this thing?

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Well, it's really a sea change for BMW. We've seen the-- OK, so first of all, Neue Klasse. That is my terrible German pronunciation. In English, that just means new class. So for the remainder of the show, for the sake of not getting ourselves tongue tied, we can just say new class. But Neue Klasse is the proper pronunciation.

So yes, the New Class BMW is exactly that. We've seen the sedan form already. It's been floating around for actually a couple years now, but most recently in its most finished form. I did take a look at that when I was across the pond. But the big news is the Vision Neue Klasse X.

So this represents the new class in crossover slash SUV form. BMW kind of is nodding to its history with the New Class. Long-time followers of the BMW brand may realize that this is not the first New Class. The original New Class hails all the way back to the early 1960s. And it really is the vehicle that most directly modernized BMW from prewar to postwar vehicles.

The Neue Class or the New Class originally was a mid-size sedan. It started with 1.5-liter engines, graduated to a 1.6, 1.8, 2.0 as it continued going on. And all the way into the 1970s, this New Class kind of led the way for BMW. And it is actually what morphed into the BMW 5 Series that we know and love today.

So to say that the original New Class was monumental for BMW is an understatement. And the fact that they've decided to name this new vehicle architecture that will be coming out here very shortly the New Class kind of tells you exactly how BMW sees it. The original New Class was a major shift in the company. The new upcoming New Class is going to represent a similar kind of shift, an absolute change, a redirection, if you will, from the BMW that we know today to what BMW believes customers are going to want in the future.

The most obvious change is in styling. You look at the New Class, the Vision New Class X, next to a, say, current BMW X3 or BMW X5, and they couldn't be more different. They are-- you know, one is arguably-- but a lot of people would say overstyled. And then the new one, if anything, is maybe a little bit too restrained.

I think, probably, when it does come out in actual production form, we'll see a little bit more expressive styling in the vehicles that actually will be inspired by the Neue Klasse X when they make it into production. We'll probably have-- you know, they won't be quite as slab sided. They maybe will have a little bit more depth to the styling, you might say. But we've been assured that basically 80% of what you see is what is planned.

Oddly enough, even though the first thing that you might want to talk about with the Vision Neue Klasse X or the other Neue Class or New Class sedan-- even though styling is the first thing you want to talk about, it might actually be the least interesting part of the vehicle. Everything about the car is rethought, re-engineered.

The chassis is completely new. It's built on the principles of BMW with, you know, being fun to drive and being, like, having an emotional connection, or so they say. No one's actually driven it outside of potentially BMW engineers. But they say it's going to be a BMW. You're definitely going to tell.

But man, you step inside the thing, and it is like-- it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what you might what you might say. It's not mid-century modern. It's not Bauhaus. It's not-- it's not, like, anything other than restrained and subdued, especially when compared to what we know of BMW today.

You could see it from the steering wheel, which is very interestingly styled, the way that the spokes come out. You can see it in pictures on our site. The control surfaces, there's multi-function buttons on the steering wheel. There's a touch screen. There's no rotary controllers to be found anywhere.

Seating surfaces are made from recycled materials, recycled fish nets. There's all kinds of textiles inside, very little of what you'd consider, like, leather or even faux leather. It'll be interesting to see how much of that makes it into production. But they say that those were chosen on purpose. And they say 80% of what you see is what they're planning.

So there's a lot of questions that the Neue Klasse of vehicles in both sedan and SUV form-- a lot of questions remain unanswered. How much-- I mean, the biggest one is how much of what we're seeing in these conceptual or, as BMW says, these visions? How much of that is going to translate? And in what does translate, how clearly or how close is the vision to what is actually going to be in production? We're going to have to wait and see.

Another big part of it is personalization, too. BMW's doing a lot when it comes to the idea-- in the same way that you might buy an iPhone or you might buy an Android and you might-- you know, you want to change your background. You want to change your ringtones. You want to change volumes. You want to change colorways, pathways, all those kinds of things. You might even want to map buttons in a certain way. And BMW is going to allow you to do that with its upcoming software updates.

We played around with a little bit, everything from what the car sounds like as you hit the accelerator pedal to the color pathways. And you can even download your Instagram feed using an app on BMW's latest infotainment system. And you can actually have your own Instagram feed scrolling through as the background photos on the infotainment.

So I guess take everything that you know about BMW right now or everything you think you know about BMW right now and put it aside because a lot is going to be changing. And it's all being previewed in this new class of vehicles.

GREG MIGLIORE: Well, I think that's a pretty good way to sum it all up right there. Nicely said. I'm curious. When you-- and you saw these things in the flesh, right?

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Correct, yes.

GREG MIGLIORE: Is there anything that maybe won't come through, like, you know, when you're scrolling through your phone, looking on the site? In the pictures, anything that, like, is worth, you know, really calling out that is-- maybe it's an Easter egg. Maybe it's just a little bit of a surprise and delight type of feature on these things.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yes, definitely. I would say mostly inside. What I saw in the exterior of the vehicle, I think, translates into photos pretty well. The inside, I think, if anything, BMW could be accused of being a little bit clinical in its interior furnishings and designs and styles at present. And that's probably been the case for a good long time.

The Neue Klasse is the exact opposite. It's warm. It's inviting. It's comfortable. It's fabrics and textiles instead of plastics and, you know, leathers. That's really the biggest thing that you wouldn't get from looking at it in photos or on videos that you really feel immersive when you're opening up the doors and actually getting inside.

It's so, so anti what I think of BMW right now. That's honestly the biggest thing that stands out.

GREG MIGLIORE: OK, sounds pretty cool. Well, check out that story. If you're listening to "The Autoblog Podcast" over the weekend, scroll on back. Jeremy actually works the weekend. So I'm sure he'll keep these things front and center for your viewing pleasure. Check out the story that went up this week. And it's a good one, pretty interesting stuff.

So let's shift gears. We're going to go domestic here. It's the end of the road for the Jeep Wrangler V8, which we knew. But the 2024 Wrangler Rubicon 392 goes out with, as it seems like all Stellantis models do, with a final edition, which I think is a fitting end for this very powerful Jeep. I've always personally liked this engine a lot, the 6.4-liter one. It sounds great. And you also get things like a winch, big tires. And they're just going to make 3,700 of these.

So, you know, I would say this. I'm sad to see the Wrangler lose the 392. But for me-- and I know you're kind of a Jeep guy as well-- the 392 was kind of like a party trick for the Wrangler, something that they put in there in response to the fact that after decades of not having really any domestic competition, suddenly the Bronco showed up.

So it's like, OK, Jeep is like, how can we counter that? What can we do that's different? It's very, you know, Stellantis, Mopary-- Fiat, Chrysler as it has been in the last five, six years. And I think this was definitely going into, like, the standard playbook. But to me, a Jeep does not have to have a V8. Like, a Wrangler does not have to have some big, crazy hot rod V8 in it. So it was cool. I think these things will be collector's items. But so it goes.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you, completely unnecessary, but if you are a car guy, unnecessary in a really awesome way. You can do amazing things with gearing. I used to have a 2.5-liter, four-cylinder Wrangler with a five-speed manual. You put the-- I don't remember what the torque was, pretty low, somewhere, you know, maybe 120, 130 pound-feet. I don't know. A far cry. It's like what one cylinder of the 392 puts out.

But you put the thing in four-wheel low and put it in first gear and-- I mean, nothing's going to stop it. It'll climb up anything. Take your foot off the clutch. Let it start climbing. And you barely even need to nudge the accelerator because that's what Jeep does. They've got these two-speed transfer cases with extremely ultra-low gearing. That's literally what four-wheel drive low means.

So does a Wrangler need a 392 cubic inch, 6.4 liter if you prefer, V8 engine with way too much horsepower? No, it absolutely does not. Is it cool that they put it in there? Yeah, it's really cool. It works on the road a lot better than you might think. It makes the Wrangler, you know, kind of into more of a highway cruiser than it's ever been and, you know, one that'll also send strips of rubber down the pavement when you get onto it in 1/4 mile.

So, you know, is it cool? Yeah. Is it necessary? No. Then I think the real question is, if this is going away, what are they going to-- what are they going to replace it with? Are they going to just abandon the overpowered off-roader segment entirely? That seems doubtful. I mean--

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Greg, you used the term Mopary a little bit ago in the--

GREG MIGLIORE: It's a technical term.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, but it's apt. And if you know anyone who's been watching Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge for the last decade knows exactly what you mean when you say Mopary. There's definitely going to be something, you know, stupid power that they'll replace it with. I don't know if it's going to be a Hurricane Inline-Six. I don't know if it's going to be an overpowering of the 4xe plug-in powertrain. I don't know. Is this the end of stupid performance in Jeeps? I don't think that's likely.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right. So we'll stay with this topic here. It's definitely not the end of stupid performance in Mustangs. As the Challenger Hellcat is on its way out, speaking of final editions for all those different Mopar muscle cars, Ford decided to unveil a $10,000 factory-supported Whipple supercharger kit that will get your Mustang to 810 horsepower, which seems like an awesome idea for almost any Mustang tuner fan. And now you get factory support, which I think is-- for me, that makes this even more compelling.

It kind of blows my mind to think of 810 horsepower in a Mustang. I've driven, you know, the Shelby GT500. These things have had a lot of horsepower. But this still seems-- you know, again, it's probably along the lines of a 392 Wrangler. It's a little gratuitous, a little gluttonous. But hey, it's all good. I'm here for it. It's a muscle car. It really takes the Mustang to muscle car status.

I don't think I would probably upgrade my Mustang in this fashion just because-- I mean, it's certainly cool. I like it. Just I like some of the other tactics they've taken with the less powerful models, you know? I'd probably go, like, Dark Horse or something, a little more of a proportional response. So what do you think of this thing?

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Well, I mean, I'm all in favor of it.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: We're talking about--

GREG MIGLIORE: I'm not against it either, just to be clear.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Oh, no. Yeah, no. Yeah, I didn't get that impression. So a regular Mustang GT is 486 horsepower. The Dark Horse is 500 horsepower. This is 810. I mean, that's pretty great, up to 810. But even more important, torque is up to 615 pound-feet, which is nearly 200 pound-feet more than what the stock makes.

I mean, anyone who follows the aftermarket will be able to tell you that there's no way to get that kind of power increase from 486 to 800 or 810 and 418 pound-feet up to 615 pound-feet for $10,000 and have a three-year 36,000-mile factory warranty on top of it. I mean, it's a kind of a slam dunk.

And its 49-state legal. So if you're listening to this and live in California, sorry. None of this applies to you unless you kind of want to skirt the rules. This is a Whipple kit, too. Ford and the Mustang has kind of a little bit of a long history with these--

GREG MIGLIORE: Oh yeah.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: --Whipple superchargers. That's been a popular upgrade for, I mean, several generations. And Whipple sells a kit, too. And theirs is $9,295. But then you add a $700 warranty. And that makes it about the same price.

But Whipple says that their kit is not currently emissions legal, whereas Ford is saying, yep, we've already done the work. I assume it requires some sort of-- well, not assume. It clearly requires some sort of ECU flash. But I mean, Ford's done the dirty work for you and are offering it for roughly the same price. So I mean, by all means, Mustang owners, upgrade your cars.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right, sounds good. Yeah, Whipple superchargers and Mustangs, I do think, are synonymous.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Oh, absolutely.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right, let's go back into a little more of the serious realm, a little less whimsical and fun. Shell announced plans this week to close about 1,000 stations and invest in an EV network. A lot of this will be to position itself to take advantage of the growing electric vehicle space and other markets, like China.

But broadly speaking, some of these implications will impact the United States. What, essentially, they're trying to do is make it so there'll be more chargers controlled by Shell and make them more accessible to everyday drivers, make the experience of charging your car a lot more like filling up your car with gas.

Joel Stocksdale drove to Chicago last month for the Auto Show and the EV9. He had a great experience. And he purposely said he didn't do a lot of planning ahead just to see what it would be like, knowing that he had a very capable vehicle with a lot of range. And I think he had a plug with him. So worse comes to worse, you just find an outlet and wait it out. So he knew he had some margin for error there.

But looking at this news, I think it could be good for consumers, ultimately, in the US, especially if you could pull into a Shell station and there's just a couple of chargers for you, especially if they're fast ones. I think Shell also wants to look at this holistically and make it so-- it's like even gas stations aren't the greatest place to spend time. But I think they want to make it so if you pulled into, like, a charge station, you know, there's coffee shop, like, places to go to the bathroom, Wi-Fi, all the basic things that you would need in, well, a gas station.

So I think it's interesting Shell bought up another charge network. And I believe they are behind Tesla and maybe somebody else. They're in the top, at least, five as far as companies that are in the charging space, which I think is interesting. And it does seem like a forward-looking move to me.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, absolutely. It goes along with the next piece of news that we're going to talk about. But, you know, I happen to be an EV owner myself. Mine's a Tesla. And I can tell you one of the reasons why I ended up with a Tesla and not another EV is access to the Supercharger network. You know, Joel's experience, he drove a Kia EV9 from Detroit to Chicago and had a flawless experience.

That's what I've come to expect with the Tesla Supercharger network is a flawless experience. The more additional chargers are out there and available besides Teslas and, you know, besides the Electrify America and the other large ones-- the more there are, the better. Competition is going to be good and just availability even more so. And it's going to become more and more important as more and more electric cars end up on the roads, which leads us to the next point that we were going to talk about.

More and more electric cars are naturally being sold. It's just a fact. You'll probably see a lot of headlines. You have over the last couple of months. And I'm sure you will over the coming months and years that there's a lot of people that are not ready to buy an EV just yet.

However, the numbers are still drastically increasing. You know, it was-- I remember when I first started covering electric vehicles in the early 2010s. And, you know, the numbers were like fractions of a percentage. Last year, the number, it was-- I think it was over 8% of all vehicles sold in the United States were EVs. So I mean, that's drastic. That's huge. And the more are out there, the more are going to need to plug in and charge.

However, a lot of people are extremely concerned about the government forcing them into electric vehicles. If you follow Autoblog and have an open mind, you'll realize that's not the case. No one is forcing people to buy electric vehicles. But what they have been doing is making regulations that are going to force automakers into offering them and offering them in much larger quantities than they even do currently. But the federal government has just literally this week announced that it is lowering the standards of certain calculations that would have forced car companies to massively increase the number of electric vehicles that they are selling unless they wanted to pay millions or potentially even billions of dollars in fines.

So here's a quick overview of the math. I know that this isn't interesting. But it is important just to establish the reasoning behind this rule change and why it's important. Currently, a Ford F-150 Lightning, which is the electric truck, is rated at the miles per gallon equivalent of 237.7 miles per gallon.

That's not what you'll see on the window sticker. But that is what CAFE, corporate average fuel economy, rates it as, wildly inaccurate, wildly overstated. They were going to correct that wild overstating starting for the 2027 year by reducing that MPGe from 237.7 to 67.1, massive, more realistic estimate of its real-world efficiency, for sure, when compared with a gasoline-powered Ford truck.

That was a 72% drop. It was going to happen in 2027. Instead, there's going to be a gradual reduction starting that year. It's going to go slowly and end up in 2030, three years later, at 65% reduction, which is even smaller overall than the one that was going to happen in 2027.

So there's the math. What that means for car companies is that their current electric vehicles are going to give them much more leeway to continue selling gas-powered vehicles in the numbers that allowed them to continue raking in profits. And for consumers, the end result is going to be more choice between whether you're ready to buy EV. Or if you're not ready to buy EV and you want to stick with gasoline, there's probably going to be more choices available for you to do that thanks to these new government regulations that were just this week passed by the Biden administration.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right, sounds good. Way to break it down. I think in this podcast, we're going all over the place, from V8s, to environmental regulations with chargers in between, and of course, the Neue Class.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Well, it is the automotive industry, you know?

GREG MIGLIORE: Indeed. Indeed.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: A lot of different directions it goes.

GREG MIGLIORE: You know, One Direction is a band. So don't really know--

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Are you trying to bring in a new audience, Greg, to the podcast?

GREG MIGLIORE: There we go. There we go. All right, let's close out the news section with Marcello Gandini passed on, famous designer for designing the Countach, many, many famous designs, the Stratos. We have a list of his most significant ones. And I mean, outside of like that Lambo and a few other things, I think they're all significant, actually. It really becomes subjective as to what was his best because he has so many great things.

You know, I think you put the Lambo on there as yours. Or did you go with the Miura? That was another good one, too.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I did both. I did the Miura and the Countach.

GREG MIGLIORE: OK.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: I also wrote he did a lot of small cars.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Autobianchi A112, Audi 50, Volkswagen Polo. Yeah. One thing that he said is that he believes that just styling a vehicle is-- he said just styling is not fun. He believes that a true vehicle has to be designed from the ground up. And style is a result of its overall design. So man, but if you look at his listing of vehicles that his name is attached to, unbelievable.

GREG MIGLIORE: Oh yeah.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yeah, just the number and the depth of it is super impressive.

GREG MIGLIORE: I would love to drive the Miura. And I would love to drive the Alfa Romeo Montreal--

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yes.

GREG MIGLIORE: --which is one that I think people sometimes forget, gorgeous cars.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Yes.

GREG MIGLIORE: I did get to drive the Countach in Miami--

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Oh.

GREG MIGLIORE: --if you want to talk about a great setting.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: Was it white on white?

GREG MIGLIORE: I did drive a white one. I also drove a red one.

JEREMY KORZENIEWSKI: OK.

GREG MIGLIORE: So there are a lot to drive. It's like driving a truck while laying down that you can't see out of would be the way-- because the seats are so angled. But beautiful car. It just-- I think back to, like, looking at the way that car-- you know, its dimensions, its proportions, its angles, I mean, it's so Gandini. And, you know, it's-- I mean, I don't think it's overstating it to say that a lot of people like cars because of Gandini's cars, you know? He really, you know, did some great work, obviously.