Andy Stonehouse/Special to the Summit Daily
With drier, summertime roads on the horizon — and a blessed season of repaving — we may once again be safely able to turn our attention to vehicles of a more hard-pavement variety.
A good example is the newly expanded range of John Cooper Works editions of the 2022 Mini, the long-beloved and iconic British micro-automobile that’s long been the niche product of BMW.
You are probably aware of how broadly the Mini family has grown in recent years, with station wagon and neo-SUV renditions of the basic model. The John Cooper Works models, named after the company’s long-ago racing visionary, are an attempt to go back to the basics, but do so in an impressively powerful and even racetrack-oriented route — though they’re entirely suited for regular roads. Alternately, a couple are also equipped with all-wheel drive, and might make for winter cavorting of a type I would now rather leave to younger automobile enthusiasts.
I had a brief interlude with the most core model of the bunch — a two-door hardtop version that was $32,900 without options but came to $40,850 with the “iconic trim” package and the full touchscreen navigation added to the tab. Plus $100 for JCW “bonnet stripes,” just to round things out. The idealized combo is the Rebel Green body color, with a lipstick-colored Chili Red roof, mirror caps and red front Brembo brake calipers.
The resulting two-tone micromachine is set apart from its many diminutive cousins by the addition of an uptuned 2.0-liter twin-turbo BMW engine that generates 228 horsepower and 236 pound-feet of torque. That’s a substantial kick in the pants from the more traditional output, and potentially a lot of power for the rather small, two-door automobile. Very small, actually.
Not to be outdone, the JCW package is now available on four Mini variants, including the convertible version of the two-door model and, with potentially terrifying results, a 301-horsepower version in the four-door Clubman model and the chunkier, small crossover-styled Countryman model. Both of the latter get Mini’s ALL4 all-wheel drive system, turning them into more versatile whips, quite literally.
My two-door hardtop reminded me a lot of more dedicated track editions of other brands, suggesting a somewhat limited fan base of those who really want to wrestle the most they can out of a front-drive racer that seems to have the same proportions as a shopping cart. Parking, maybe even in your own kitchen, is never a problem.
It’s probably a good thing these two-door platforms did not receive the full 301-hp steroid booster shot, as the torque steer that results from all that power being channeled into high-performance 18-inch tires can be more than enough to handle, as it is. Even better, mine had a real six-speed manual transmission, ideal for smoking those front slicks to the core.
It actually reminded me of the mid- to late-’00s Mazdaspeed 3, which was a bit bigger in stature but always felt like the engine was going come flying out of the hood and pull you along the street like an out-of-control outboard motor.
There is indeed some white-knuckling required to keep that full burst of power grounded, especially from dry starts. The upside is that the effect is really only a big issue on show-off-styled throttle dumps; in regular motoring, and even more enthusiastic mountain curve drives, you can reel it in and enjoy the feel-every-inch-of-the-road sensation of the sport-tuned suspension and the happily capable four-wheel disc brake system.
And just what did I do with a tiny, high-powered, two-door micro car, the week before Christmas? I moved house, strangely. Not really the most efficient choice on my part, but the amount of luggage, groceries, cleaning supplies and personal effects I was able to mash into every last molecular space of the JCW was quite astounding. I even learned that a soft backpack and towels could easily fill up the under-deck storage in the back for even more optimization.
Two trips, however, were a necessity. Probably five, if had more goods than your average person.
Move complete, I was once again able to focus on the JCW’s rip-roaring character and its multitude of aerodynamic add-ons. A full flow-through air foil hangs is parked on the back of the roof, and the inset pair of rear pipes are also surrounded by a load of downforce-producing plastic. It still retains all the other iconic Mini attributes, including the oversized headlamps and British flag-inspired brake lamps; this one’s just a lot Mini-er.
Andy Stonehouse’s column “Mountain Wheels” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Golden. Contact him at summitmountainwheels@gmail.com.
