New MINI JCW Countryman Review Says It's Disappointingly Fat, Not That Exciting

Steve Sutcliffe starts out all confident, saying that at 231 PS and 350 Nm of torque this is the most potent MINI ever made. But is it really? The JCW Coupe that they discontinued does the 0 to 100 km/h sprint in 6.4 seconds, 0.1s faster. There's also something called the Works GP, which can literally run circles this pudgy crossover.

The problem is that despite upgrading the engine from a 1.6-liter to a 2.0-liter, MINI has been reluctant to up the power. Whether that's down to the available parts or only wanting to keep costs the same by sharing bits with the X1 xDrive25i, we'll never know. But the point is they didn't try hard enough.

You simply can make a car that grabs you by the neck and pins you down with 230-something horsepower, not when people have sampled 400 horsepower hot hatchbacks with rally-style launches.

All that wouldn't be a problem if the JCW Countryman were cheap enough for young people to enjoy, but it's not. In a recent article, I argued that €38,800 isn't a lot in this day and age, but it makes you wonder who the target audience for this car is.

The Auto Express review also makes a point about the weight, which at around 1.6 tons is too much for both the MINI brand and the John Cooper Works badge. It's a shame, really, because a performance crossover is what seemingly everybody wants these days. Instead of being the lightened 4x4, the Countryman JCW is the sort of second car for wealthy individuals who say "give me the one that has everything on it."