While attending the MINI Challenge at Wakefield Park last weekend I picked up quite a few snippets of information. One very tasty tidbit was in regard to the upcoming factory built MINI John Cooper Works. The car should, at the very least, be on show at the Sydney Motor Show in October and with any luck deliveries to Australian customers could take place before year’s end. But that’s not all, speculation that the car would have a list price of no more than AU$55K was all but confirmed. While a firm price was not mentioned by the little birdy I spoke to, I was told that the pricing should compare favourably to the previous R53 MINI Cooper S JCW. It is believed that Australian delivered JCW cars will be based on the Chilli spec of the regular R56 Cooper S. Now that BMW owns the John Cooper Works brand name they will be building on that by only releasing the hottest R56 Cooper S as an independent model line, akin to a BMW M3, and it won’t be available as a retrofit kit option like the R53 model. Visit your local MINI Garage for more details.
For a more comprehensive view on just what the MINI John Cooper Works will entail, apart from close to 160kW, read this excellent MotoringFile report. Keep in mind that the info in that article is based on US spec cars and some of the finer details may differ for the Australian market. Suffice to say the fundamental engine mechanicals will be largely the same.
