The John Cooper Works From Mini, a Unique History

The Mini Cooper has been one of the favorite vehicles for those who like the small body size, wide stance and easy to maneuver dynamics of the car.  In fact some have loved to so much that they actually made racing models out of the car, which gives the Cooper a history that has been amazing for many years.  The John Cooper Works model that was originally built had a very unique history and became a car that was brought to tracks to perform exactly as desired on any road or race course.

John Cooper say the possibilities in this car back in 1959 when he gave the go ahead to develop 1,000 Mini Coopers to some racing specs.  At the time John Cooper was the owner of a Formula 1 team and saw that this small city car would be great for racing.  The additions he ordered included disc brakes, a close-ratio manual transmission, a larger displacement engine and two carburetors instead of the one that was on the current engine in the car.  This gave a car that was built low to the ground and could be easily maneuvered at whatever speeds were desired.

Once this version of the Cooper was offered to the public, in 1961 it had already been racing for a couple years and were being bought up at record rates, so fast in fact that Mini could not keep up with the demand for the car.  The only knock on the car at the time was the one offered to the public only brought in 55 horsepower, which wasn’t much, as we all know, but for the time it did the job and gave the car the first taste of the success it would enjoy for many years to come.

Nearly fifty years later, John Cooper’s son Michael began John Cooper Works in Sussex, England and started making performance parts for the production Minis that were coming off the line.  Because of this immediate success, BMW (who now owned Mini) bough the company outright and started putting the JCW badge on the high performance versions of the Cooper giving us the first generation that got the John Cooper Works model in 2008.  This gave us a Cooper that would be more fun to drive than most that were prowling city streets around Europe and starting to make their way to the States for the power hungry of America to enjoy as well.

Now that we are entering the second generation of having the JCW badge on a Cooper, the car features Brembo brakes that are built for the car.  This means having ones that are 13.2 inches in front and offer a fixed four-piston action to give the Cooper the right control when it’s time to brake the car and bring it to a halt or just slow it down for a sharper turn, although this car can certainly whip around many turns at some seriously aggressive speeds.

The new models of the JCW show up with a turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine that pushes out 228 horsepower and 236 lb.-ft. of torque, but power is not all this engine offers, although it is a far cry for the 55 that was originally offered in 1961.  The engine also features hemispherical piston crowns which give better durability and a special turbo that has more heat resistance.  The JCW shows up with a better flowing exhaust system that uses thin tubing to keep the weight down.  Adding torque vectoring to the car helps to reduce the possibility of torque steer.

When you want a performance Mini Cooper you really do need to choose the John Cooper Works mode.  On the outside there is an aggressive front air dam that channels air to the radiators and a rear aero diffuser that adds to the downforce along with a beautiful rear spoiler that reduces the lift the car could feel.  All of this along with the dynamics underneath make the JCW version of the Mini Cooper one that has a long and storied history as well as being a modern power player in the hot hatch segment.