MINI GP
A mischievous little hot hatch on a classic B-road blast – you know what to expect, right? Not in this new mega-Mini, you don’t
Stripped back and powered up, just like Issigonis always wanted. But is the new GP as wild to drive as it looks?
TThe fuel filler cap irks me. It’s in same position as usual, but the John Cooper Works GP is not The Usual Mini. Not only is this the most powerful, fastest Mini ever built for the public highway, it also wrests from the Honda Civic Type R its dubious ‘most outrageous body kit on sale’ title. And yet... that little filler cap ruins the effect. Just how functional – how necessary exactly – are those wafery carbon-fibre wheelarch ‘blades’, if one is scarred by a divot where the super unleaded goes in?
Take a stroll around the new GP and more unease creeps in. How seriously are we supposed to take this car? As per all turbo Minis, the bonnet scoop is fake, as is most of the grille. The twin-section roof spoiler is vast, but thickset and plasticky, like it’s been styled in a creche, not a wind tunnel. As a whole, the GP is cartoonishly bulbous and overwrought, like a six-packed Superman costume.
Peer closer – get your knees dirty – and the GP at last begins to reveal some promise. The front wheels stretch themselves around dinner-plate discs and chunky, muscle-bound calipers. The tailpipes are massive tunnel bores, burrowing under the tail to a gigantic backbox. Ahead of that lies a strengthening beam offcut from the Forth Rail Bridge, complete with the sort of bolts used to stop festival tents becoming expensive kites.
And behind the lipstick up front, the radiator and ancillaries are crammed hard up against the limits of the bodywork. Up close, it has intent.
Jump in and it’s a similar story of mixed impressions. As ever, you drop properly low into the car, finding the driving position long-legged and natural: bang-on. Behind the steering wheel is a pair of 3D-printed aluminium paddleshifters; above, the Mini Electric’s digital instrument panel, with red graphics replacing green. Over your shoulder, a tomato-red strut brace and a dusty window, because in the name of hardcore, Mini’s put the rear wiper in the same skip as it put the back seats.
And yet, the remaining chairs are no slim-backed bucket jobs – they’re the generously padded, heated thrones from the standard Mini JCW. There’s a full iDrive set-up, dual-zone climate control, electric windows, while proper doorhandles get the nod over fabric straps. The most extreme Mini ever made even retains its folding armrest, which gets in the way every time you try to rip the handbrake.
In fairness, Mini GPs have always been weirdly specced. They come along towards the end of the car’s life cycle, junk the back seats, add about 20 horsepower and harden the suspension, but retain the estate agent’s mod cons. The first one from 2006 was a supercharged fizzbomb, weighing just 1,090kg. Then, 2013’s GP2 sequel was a lairier, edgier prospect, turbocharged for more torque. Only 2,000 of each were made, snaring a loyal band of disciples happy to pay ‘big’ hot hatch money for a two-seater Cooper with a railing in the boot. I do wonder what they’re going to make of this one.
Starting the GP3 is fun: like all Minis, rousing the engine with a well-sprung red toggle switch right next to the gearlever is just a nice touch. You get a wholly unnecessary flair of revs from the 2.0-litre, turbocharged four-cylinder motor, but the exhaust only crackles if it’s already warmed through.
The first thing likely to upset the faithful is how you set off. Normally you’d slot first via an oversized gearknob atop a typically snickety mechanism. In the GP, you slide a standard BMW lever two clicks backward until a D pops up on the screen. It’s an automatic. There’s no manual option, and instead of using its seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox, Mini has gone for an eight-speed slusher, because of the engine that comes ready mated.
Unlike the first two Mini GPs, which were Mini Cooper S models turned up to eleventy stupid, the MkIII is a BMW M135i in retro get-up. The engine hasn’t been tickled up from a JCW’s already heady 227bhp to the middling two-hundreds, oh no. This is a threehundred horsepower Mini.
Thanks to reinforced pistons, a heavy-duty crankshaft, more boost pressure and uprated injectors, the GP gets the same 302bhp and 332lb ft found in BMW’s hottest 1-Series, and inherits its limited-slip front diff and 8spd auto. The only piece of powertrain not copy-pasted is the 4WD system. The GP puts all its power through the front tyres.
And it really does. It’s not long before the GP makes it abundantly clear that it’s not like other Minis. It has a totally different personality – an ice-cool, efficient, eminently... German precision.
Where a standard JCW smokes away power in wheelspin and muddles around with torque-steer, the GP claws monumental purchase out of the road. It is a rabidly fast bit of kit, once you’re through the good ol’ fashioned turbo lag.
Apparently, maximum torque is on hand at 1,750rpm, but ideally you need 3,000 revs spooled up before it really feels like the GP is on boost. Then it vaults through the gear in one big spring-loaded bound, dispatching straights with an Audi RS3-like disdain.
The box allows you to lazily hold the left paddle and let the downchanges slot home when the computer decides. Foolproof, but anti-social. Demand to override, and the changes are rounded off, or ignored until the ones ’n’ zeros say so. Mini’s argument is the same one that’s rife across the fast car industry: paddles make the car faster around a track (it’s quicker around the ’Ring than a BMW M2), and it’s easier to drive for a wider audience, letting Billy no-skills keep both hands on the wheel all the time. But it’s come at the same cost as other victims of a manual-ectomy – keeping the driver at arm’s length from the action.
Still, I arrive at a corner confident some quintessential Mininess will leak out. It doesn’t. The GP has the exact same attitude to corners as it does to straights. They’re inconveniences to be eaten and dispatched. The GP simply hasn’t heard of body roll. Can’t comprehend understeer. You can chuck it in, feel it stick and fully lift off the throttle, but it won’t wiggle. The amount of grip the GP generates is spectacular, and it’s not even wearing a particularly trick tyre, or apparently bending the air to its will.
The car rides 10mm lower than a JCW, the track is slightly wider, and there’s plenty of rubber on the road, but there’s nothing exotic going on here. The dampers are a passive set-up, the diff isn’t as rampant as, say, a Civic Type R’s, though the GP’s overall nature is very similar to the Honda’s. It’s remorselessly, ruthlessly quick. Except, in the Honda, you’ve got individual elements to enjoy: a world-class gearbox, an angry diff and an exciting engine. And this is the befuddling paradox of the fastest Mini ever: it’s a one-trick pony. Yes, it’s terribly impressive that such a silly looking device drives like it’s got ground effect skirts and a Scalextric magnet on board, but all those fins and wings are doing is generating a lot of wind noise.
Turn all the traction control off. Find a bend with some dust on the apex. It won’t care. The Mini GP doesn’t have that sense of humour. It looks like a clown, but it’s more Joker than Ronald McDonald. The GP’s all about superhero looks, but it’s no laughing matter...