Named after a sporting legend, the new Mini John Cooper Works has a lot to live up to. How does it measure up? 

PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN — John Cooper Works editions of Mini’s cars are still relatively rare, but after it’s launched in Singapore around the fourth quarter of the year, you’ll be able to use the new JCW as a barometer of how much (or whether) we live in a nation of true driving enthusiasts.

That’s precisely who the Mini JCW is aimed at, after all. If you count driving as one of your passions, this is a car to pay attention to.

All Minis are meant to appeal to people who enjoy being the wheel to some extent, anyway.

The John Cooper Works takes the spicy Cooper S version of the basic hatchback that serves as Mini’s best-selling model, and turns things up several notches.

It’s named after John Cooper, the first person to realise the sporting potential of Minis.

Mini’s engineers have added power, Just as Cooper did back in the 1960s, though the work didn’t entail simply plugging a laptop to the Cooper S’s engine and tapping a few keys.

The JCW actually has a specially-designed turbocharger (the turbo itself is part of the exhaust manifold, to shorten the path that exhaust gases have to travel before hitting the turbine, thereby speeding up response), along with new pistons to work with the higher boost that the new turbo delivers.

That enables the 2.0-litre engine to produce 228bhp, enough to make it the most powerful engine to be fitted into a Mini.

The end result is a superbly lively car with a rorty voice to match. The Mini JCW isn’t fast enough to give anyone a heart attack, but it has a wonderfully eager personality, matching every prod on the accelerator with a puppy-like enthusiasm for pouncing.

It’s just as playful through corners, where the fast steering makes it borderline twitchy. But with a chassis as grippy as this one, the Mini JCW never feels scarily darty. Instead it’s a beautiful driving partner, one that rewards your eagerness with its quick reflexes, while paying back smooth steering inputs with an agility that comes with lots of precision.

It’s very balanced and forgiving, too. Go into a corner slightly too hot, and all you have to do is ease up slightly on the throttle and steering, and try again. The Mini doesn’t punish you for it by wagging its tail or otherwise feeling like it’s about to throw itself into the bushes and take you with it.

That weird mix of agility and stability is courtesy of some suspension tuning on Mini’s part, with the JCW getting its own setup within the Mini family altogether.

It has bigger brakes, too, and 17-inch wheels to accommodate them, with front calipers from Brembo — chosen, says Mini, for their ability to take the stress of a track day.

Indeed, the JCW is an unusually focused car. The extra power is complemented by beefier brakes and retuned suspension, and even the way it looks is more about performance than appearance.

The large scoops in the bumper are not just for engine cooling, but also to supply the brakes with a steady flow of air.
That small rear spoiler on the top of the tailgate looks nice, but along with the rear apron and small diffuser surrounding the tailpipes, it helps to cut aerodynamic lift, to keep the Mini nice and stable at high speed.

You can actually take it to 160km/h or so and not really feel the speed, such is its composure.

The latest Minis ride much better than their predecessors did, too, and the JCW is no different. It tears up the rulebook that says cars have to bounce the fillings from your teeth in order to handle well.

Instead, the JCW rides like a big French car, just gliding over bumps in a way that makes you wonder why other cars don’t behave the same way.

What’s remarkable, of course, is that the Mini isn’t a big car, in spite of its refinement.

Indeed, the interior may be beautifully decked out with racing-style seats and lots of styling flourishes — the speedo has a chequered flag pattern in it, for instance, and the steering wheel looks like it was handmade by people with eyes like owls — but the JCW’s biggest weakness is that it’s a small car for something that’s going to cost at least a couple of hundred thousand by the time the taxman is done.

It’s a lovely car to drive, and its looks are nearly enough on their own to impart a sense of occasion to every journey in the JCW, but if you have practical needs, the Mini will struggle to meet them.

The same thing could be said of most Ferraris, come to think of it, so perhaps the Mini JCW should be thought of along similar lines, with a fraction of the performance at a fraction of the price, but plenty of driving joy on offer regardless.

If nothing else, our advice is that if you were looking at the Cooper S hatchback, you should see if you reckon a JCW is worth stretching for.

The John Cooper Works stuff? It works.

NEED TO KNOW Mini John Cooper Works
Engine 1,998cc, 16V, inline 4, turbo
Power 228bhp at 5200rpm
Torque 320Nm at 1250-4800rpm
Gearbox 6-speed automatic
Top Speed 246km/h
0-100km/h 6.1 seconds
Fuel efficiency 5.7L/100km
CO2 133g/km
Price To be confirmed
Availability Fourth quarter 2015

 

WHO WAS JOHN COOPER?

FOR YEARS, BMW paid a licence fee to John Cooper’s family for the right to use his name on its Minis, until buying over his engineering company so it could own the Cooper tag outright.

But who was this man whose name adorns a British icon?

John Cooper was, in fact, a carmaker in his own right, starting up the Cooper Car Company with his father after World War II.

It made nimble single-seater racing cars, and perhaps its greatest legacy is the idea of putting engines at the back of the car to improve handling balance. No one did it in Formula One racing before he did, and now it forms the template for every F1 car.
(Cooper himself downplayed the innovation, saying he did it out of mechanical simplicity since his cars used chain drive from motorbike engines.)

But John Cooper’s association with Mini involved turning them into rally-winning machines, thus establishing the car’s sporting credentials and forever associating his name with the cheeky machines.

He remains a celebrated figure as the father of the motorsports industry in England, and advised BMW on the new Mini until his death in 2000 at age 77.