It was the hottest ticket in town at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. Now the new Mini John Cooper Works, based on the latest Mini three-door Hatch, has become one of the hottest new cars on the streets of Britain.
Drawing on the much-loved British brand’s 55 years of proud motorsport heritage, it is the most powerful production Mini ever with its 2.0-litre TwinPower Turbo four-cylinder engine delivering 229bhp.
Driving flexibility and overtaking prowess have also been emphatically sharpened thanks to the 236lb/ft of torque: acceleration from 50 to 75 mph is completed in 5.6 seconds (manual gearbox), a 10% improvement over the previous model, and a time which puts many sports cars in the shade. With either transmission, the top speed is 153mph.
All of this has been achieved with the exemplary efficiency made possible by Minimalism fuel-saving and emissions-reducing technologies which are a feature of every model from Mini.
With the manual gearbox, the new John Cooper Works has combined fuel consumption of 42.2mpg with CO2 emissions pared to 155g/km. The automatic sports transmission means even more spectacular improvements of almost 20% over the previous model, with figures of 49.6mpg and 133g/km.
The Mini John Cooper Works six-speed manual is priced £23,050, while the six-speed Steptronic version costs £24,380.