Today was a truly busy day. I've been tinkering with my 2004 MINI Cooper S since I took delivery of the car nearly 3 years ago and today I took the car close to its highest state of tune.
First a little background: I purchased my MINI on March 18, 2004 from Long Beach Mini. Around the same time one year earlier I put my name on the Cooper S wait list at Long Beach so that I could purchase the car at MSRP... something that was very difficult to do in those heady days when MINIs were rare and demand far outstripped supply. I chose to endure the year-long wait so that I could use the money I would have otherwise spent on higher factory spec (in my case just about every option including satnav). I knew I wanted to build a car that remained very close to the family name that was so prominent on the boot of the car: COOPER. You see, I'm a bit nostalgic for European cars since I was born and spent some time working in the "old world" and was very accustomed to seeing Minis as well as Citroen 2CVs, Fiat 500s, Volkswagen Beetles, etc. Cooper also reminds me of another family car company that sold cars to fund race and performance engineering programs. That company happens to be located in Maranello Italy and like Cooper it has won the Formula 1 World Championship. Just think red and Italian...
As you are probably well aware, original Mini Coopers were much like the John Cooper Works (JCW) cars of today. While the modern equivalent MINI Cooper has the fabled Cooper name on it, the car doesn't necessarily maintain a direct link with the Cooper Car Company. BMW/MINI made a shrewd move in securing the rights to the Cooper name early in the the gestation of the Mk2 MINI. So while the name Cooper was on the car, Cooper did not have as much say in the "mainstream" product with the Cooper name but instead became the official supplier of performance upgrades. Of course most of that information is now moot since Cooper has gone in-house at BMW.
With an eye towards keeping my MINI as faithful to its racing roots as possible I decided early on that all major upgrades would be via JCW or John Cooper Motorsport (JCM). I started by adding the 200HP JCW Kit, 18" JCW wheels, aerokit, and JCW doorsills as soon as I took delivery of the car. Over the following two years I gradually added the whole catalog of JCW interior/exterior/engine/suspension/ and brake enhancements. By the fall of 2006 I had exhausted the JCW catalog. I had a 210 HP JCW with all the trimmings.
In the meantime MINI had release the MINI GP at 214 HP as the definitive and final R53 JCW kit prior to the introduction of the all new MINI R56 in 2007. I had other ideas for my outgoing R53... a MINI GP slayer that would be sight rarer that the MINI GP.
More to come soon... stay tuned.
The 225+ HPD JCW
Drivetrain Upgrades: Quaife Limited Slip Differential and JCM Light Flywheel
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