To Scotland for a proper test of the 231hp Mini (and hide it from passers-by)
For a glorious week in late May, I swapped my daily commute from a 10-mile grind up the A23 to Croydon for 30 miles of beautiful, flowing A-roads between Peebles and St Boswells in the Scottish Borders. Roads like the A707, slicing through a narrow glen hemmed in by steep hills adorned with summer gorse, and the A699 with its fabulous sweeping undulations.
The JCW has never looked so good
It was my second year heading up to the area, once again to compete in a mountain bike race. Conveniently I would be re-tracing tyre tracks I'd laid down in the Clio Renaultsport 200. Provided I could fit my bike in the boot, it would the ideal opportunity to get properly acquainted with the F56 JCW.
And so began a nerve-racking game of Tetris with a rather large full-suspension bike and a far less accommodating load space. For all the grief - quite rightly, too - hurled at the steadily ballooning Mini, in this instance I was hoping the additional inches went more than skin deep. Assisted by the scalloped-out backs of the front bucket seats, and a further recess in the bootlid, the wheel-less MTB finally, and narrowly, slotted into place. Shoes, pedals, tools and spares were then neatly swallowed by the boot's lidded storage compartment, leaving plenty of room for the wheels and kit bag on top of the frame. There are roof bars being fitted to the car as I type this, but it's good to know the JCW can swallow an essential lifestyle accessory, if only for peace of mind during those eleventh-hour Waitrose stops on the way back from a ride.
This is better than Croydon
So what of the JCW's dynamics on those exhilarating Scottish roads? Mostly, the Mini left me duly impressed. It's genuinely rapid, punchy enough to pull strongly out of slow and medium speed corners without having to keep dropping down the gearbox. It devoured shorter straights and barely felt out of puff on the longer ones. The Steptronic 'box responded swiftly and obediently to every command, and there was ample, although somewhat muted, aural reward from the exhaust. And the brakes, as you might hope from four-piston Brembo calipers and dinner-plate 330mm rotors, were seriously impressive. Not just in terms of pure power, mind, but feel and modulation too. I also really like the fact that Mini has ditched the fog lights in favour of motorsport-inspired brake cooling ducts.
To keep on top of torque steer, the JCW runs equal length driveshafts, in conjunction with some electronic trickery called Torque Steer Compensation. It works. Tugging at the chunky steering wheel is barely perceptible, even when being particularly clumsy with the throttle on lumpy corners. And nor does it exhibit the frustrating trait of power being overtly rationed. It may well be, of course, but it's not something I really noticed.
Are the tyres a limiting factor?
Certainly, there's much to admire and enjoy about this latest JCW package. Yet, despite all these plaudits, I couldn't help thinking that something's missing, and it became more obvious the harder I pushed. The old Mini recipe - that's the original lower-case Issigonis version, not the shouty, Caps-lock BMW update - was all about enduring the straights and reveling in the turns; doggedly carrying unfathomable corner speed. My experience of this new John Cooper Works seems to be the antithesis. It (relatively) monsters the straights, but throws its hands up in surrender surprisingly early in the turns. My hunch is that it's the tyres that are largely to blame. At least I hope so. Like toweling socks on a parquet floor, the optional run-flat Pirelli P7 Cinturatos fitted to YC15 OCR want to glide across the surface, even when conditions are perfectly hot and sticky. Nor do they break away particularly progressively either. And in the wet, it's a genuinely tense experience, with the car fidgeting randomly between understeer and oversteer, often all in the same corner. There are many boxes on the options list that I could live without a tick in, but none that I'd go out of my way to avoid more than the ones marked '18in JCW Cup wheels', as this automatically adds the runflat tyres as well.
With a place booked on one of Mini's JCW track events next month, hopefully I'll get a chance to sample both of the wheel and tyre packages on offer back-to-back, and see if saving money on options can also unlock the JCW's dynamic potential.
FACT SHEET Car: Mini John Cooper Works Run by: Danny Milner On fleet since: May 2015 Mileage: 2,936 List price new: £31,945 (Basic list of £24,445 plus £750 for Rebel Green paint, £1,400 for Media Pack XL, £2,470 for Chili Pack, £240 for variable damper control, £140 for run-flat tyres, £220 for sun protection glass, £215 for seat heating, £210 for Mini Yours fibre alloy interior, £590 for Park Distance Control, £150 for LED headlights, £590 for Harman Kardon hi-fi, £140 for intelligent emergency calling, £450 for head-up display) Last month at a glance: A Scottish road trip shows the JCW off very well
