Long-term test: MINI John Cooper Works

Verdict

The MINI JCW impressed me on track, but its abilities there have come at some cost. It’s too firm on the road and requires too much effort to really enjoy on a regular basis. The petrol hot hatch sector is shrinking rapidly, which makes it more of a shame that MINI hasn’t quite nailed this one.

• Mileage: 6,331 miles
• Efficiency: 38.7mpg

If there’s one car brand that trades heavily on its youthful appeal, then it’s MINI. And potentially the most youth-oriented of its models is the JCW hatch I’ve been running over the past few months. I really enjoyed blasting it around the Curborough sprint course when it first arrived, and more recently I’ve noticed this hot hatch may have been influencing a change in my lifestyle. 

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Although I’m very much on the far side of 30, I’ve decided that now is as good a time as ever to get into some of my old pastimes. Despite how creaky and distinctly un-youthful my body feels, I’ve managed to nail down a ‘pop shuv-it’ in skateboarding (you might want to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater if you don’t know what I’m on about), started playing for my local 11-a-side football team, and even tried to make sure I’m not completely wasting the money I spend on my gym membership. 

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A seemingly perfect foil for this newfound activity is the MINI JCW with its excellent standard-fit Harman Kardon sound system blasting some appropriate tunes to get me pumped up. However, another aspect of the MINI has been rather more energy-sapping. I’m talking about the car’s ride, which is comically firm. I was happy to trade comfort for cornering stability around the sprint circuit, but on the road it’s more of a challenge – especially for my back. 

The JCW is exceptionally fidgety over country roads, which is a shame because this is traditionally where hot MINIs are at their best. But where you want to feel the suspension working compliantly with bumps and ruts, the JCW seems to actively fight against them. It’s tempting to say that our car’s £800 optional 18-inch wheels (which come with Continental SportContact tyres) would be better avoided for the standard-fit 17-inch rims, but we doubt an extra few millimetres of sidewall would make a substantial difference. 

Mind you, the steering is just as frantic. Its responses to any input are lightning quick and it can be almost as rapid to self-centre. I’ve mentioned the thickness of the wheel before, but it’s worth reiterating: it’s one thing in a muscular 500bhp BMW M car, but in an agile hot hatch like a MINI JCW you expect a certain degree of feel, and you’re slightly robbed of that by the fat rim. 

On track, I found the automatic gearbox’s gearchanges frustrating, but it feels better suited to my favourite roads where the JCW isn’t changing gear as often. The same can be said for the engine. It’s not particularly rewarding to rev right out to the red line, so the easily accessible and plentiful low-end torque ensures the MINI has no problem covering ground across country quickly. 

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Another convincing attribute of the JCW is the brakes. They have no issue shrugging off speed (which can be accumulated very quickly in the JCW) despite the car’s fairly sizeable 1,405kg kerbweight. The pedal’s response is nice and linear too, with no noticeable stages in the braking performance.  

Given how much the MINI JCW has been battering my spine over bumpy British B-roads, I’ve been surprised at how well the car hunkers down on the motorway. Although it’s not what you’d really call comfortable, the MINI certainly has the kind of high-speed stability that makes relatively light work of long drives. Refinement isn’t something most hot hatch buyers prioritise, and there’s a little bit of tyre noise at speed, but the wind noise is kept to a minimum. And although I’d like to hear a bit more from the exhaust at times, it too settles down on long motorway trips.

MINI John Cooper Works: first fleetwatch

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The modern MINI hits the sweet spot between real-world practicality and classic car enthusiast expectations

As anyone that’s owned a BMW-manufactured MINI this century will understand, I’ve had my fair share of comments about how “it’s too big for MINI”. But I think the proportions and sizing of my MINI are perfect – any smaller and you’re bordering on the seriously impractical (I recently found out I can fit in the back), but any larger and you’ll cause some MINI purists to properly start frothing at the mouth.

MINI John Cooper Works: first report

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Hot hatch joins our fleet and immediately hits the track

• Mileage: 2,167 miles
• Efficiency: 37.4mpg

Having bid farewell to the KGM Actyon, a much smaller replacement has found its way onto my driveway – the new MINI JCW. Those three letters stand for ‘John Cooper Works’, signalling that this is the hottest version of the MINI Cooper. And while there’s also a pure-electric JCW option, we’ve gone for a petrol-powered hot hatch. 

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The electric JCW and our car might share the same styling (aside from the prominent and rather excellent central-exit exhaust), but underneath they sit on different platforms. The MINI Electric uses a specific architecture, while the F66-generation MINI JCW with a petrol engine is based on a revised version of the previous-generation car’s platform. 

Our car is very much an evolution of the old model, with the same BMW-derived engine sending power to a seven-speed DCT. How much power? Well, the 228bhp figure remains unchanged, but there’s more torque now – up from 320Nm before to 380Nm now. The resulting 6.1-second 0-62mph time is 0.2 seconds quicker than before and it’ll top out at 155mph – all rather impressive for a MINI. 

Straight-line performance is all well and good in a hot hatch, but for a MINI (and especially the JCW), cornering is king. To put my car through its paces, I fancied a track day, but sadly I’d left it too late to get a spot on one of sister title evo’s hugely popular events. So instead, I checked out Ollie’s Secret Track Days. 

The tight and twisty Curborough Sprint Course in Staffordshire seemed the ideal location for the compact MINI to show us what it’s got. Even better, drivers went out one at a time, so I could concentrate on exploring the MINI’s abilities by myself. Before starting, I had to adjust the JCW’s drive modes – cheesily called ‘Experiences’. 

This is a little more involved than you think, because you have to use the toggle on the dash to find the ‘John Cooper Works’ mode, then wait for ‘activate go-kart mode’ (yes, seriously) to flash up on the screen. You then tap the tiny rev-counter so that the boost gauge and oil temperature readouts appear, along with the G-force meter. Once you initiate the mode, the MINI’s speakers also let out an irritating “woohoo” – which I turned off on the first day I had the car.

On my opening run, I could tell the MINI had plenty of grip – only if I pushed it to extremes would it get out of shape. The JCW’s damping is exceptionally firm on the road (something we’ll cover more later on), but on a track it helped the MINI feel nimble, as did the typically MINI-like darty steering. Confidence levels were up as a result, so I pushed harder, attempting to really test the balance of the JCW through Curborough’s chicane. 

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While I was having plenty of fun, there were some elements of the MINI JCW that frustrated. I quickly learned that if I was to keep the transmission in manual mode via the paddles during a run, I’d have to start in second gear, because trying to change gear on the opening tight corner (or any corner, for that matter) is very fiddly, thanks to the MINI’s tiny gearshift paddles hiding behind that fat-rimmed steering wheel. 

The transmission itself isn’t the best either. Towards the end of the day I found it better to leave it in automatic mode, because it often ignored my manual inputs. There’s a slight issue with the engine on track too. You don’t notice it much on the road, but wringing out every bhp can be tough when the gearbox often grabs a higher gear than you’d like. 

However, to the car’s credit, even after a full day of hard driving, the MINI JCW didn’t bat an eyelid. The temperatures and brakes all looked and felt good at the end.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.

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