MINI John Cooper Works | Video Review | CarsIreland.ie

Published on 14 November, 2018

The MINI John Cooper Works is about as much fun as you can have on four wheels

Overview

Overview

Don't let the cute looks fool you. The MINI John Cooper Works is the MINI in its quickest and most powerful form to date. With a 2.0l turbo packing 231hp under the hood, it's about as much fun as you can have on four wheels. Controversial tail lights and all.

It's a MINI. The clue is in the name. This is not a car for lugging a large family around. In fact you'll just about squeeze the weekly shop into the 278l boot.

It's also a two door, meaning there is a bit of wrangling involved to get in to the back, and when you do, well, it's not exactly adult-friendly back there. It will however accommodate two children just fine, with two sets of Isofix points for child seats, and a third on the passenger seat.

It's definitely geared more toward front seat comfort with more elbow and shoulder room than you might expect, and plenty of storage solutions for stashing road trip essentials.

The front of the cabin is where the JCW, and all MINIs for that matter, really starts to shine. It's an insanely cheerful place to be, aided largely by the jukebox-style infotainment set up which with its flashing mood lights make every journey feel like a bit of a party. The styling might be retro but the technology beneath is really quite impressive. The funky toggle switches you use to control everything from temperature to start off feel reassuringly solid. And fun.

While the standard JCW is reasonably well equipped, as with all MINIs, the list of options is long and tempting. You'll need to add the Chili pack for some of the more eye-catching styling upgrades such as the contrasting roof and mirrors, a mean set of 18 inch wheels and some more functional features like automatic air-conditioning and parking sensors.

There’s also a navigation pack which will add SatNav, a driver's armrest, MINI Connected Services and Apple CarPlay, some of which we feel could have been standard given that this is the very peak of the MINI range, and comes with a price tag to reflect that. The total sum of extras on our test car including a few other bits like a sports automatic transmission and adaptive suspension came to nearly €10,000.

We tried to resist the go-kart analogy, but it's damn near impossible with this thing. 231hp is an insane amount of power for such a small package, and the 8 speed steptronic gearbox delivers it beautifully. You ask it to go, and boy, does it go. It's blisteringly quick and refreshingly unpredictable. You find yourself zipping along at a speed that the car doesn't feel in anyway designed for and it feels good. The stiffened suspension  jostles you around to a comedic degree on a bumpy road but it's all part of the JCW experience - which is just good clean, untethered fun.

If you want to up the tiny sportscar feel you can with the drive mode selector - Sport mode will sharpen up the steering and ramp up those revs for some great cabin acoustics. There’s Comfort for the day to day, and then Green if you want to save some fuel because needless to say, it can be a thirsty little thing. MINI say 6.6 litres per 100km is possible, we got closer to 9 over our (admittedly fun) week with it.

The MINI Cooper Works is the type of car that will make you want to skip out the door to the driveway in the morning.

However, it does have a very big pricetag for such a small car. The JCW starts at about €35,000 and the options on our test car pushed that up to €46,500 which is a little difficult to stomach given the fact that realistically, you will still need a second car to do the 'big shop' in.

Definitely one for the hardcore MINI fans but still one of the most fashionable and fun to drive cars on the road.

Facts & Figures

Sinead McCann

Sinéad is our resident car tester who has the unenviable (-ok, slightly enviable) task of reviewing all the latest new cars to hit the market. You can follow her on Twitter @smcani and on Instagram @whatshedrives