MINI Countryman JCW 2019 Review – International

The entire point of a John Cooper Works version of a MINI is that it ought to be silly. Silly enough to convince people to part with more money than would otherwise be sensible for a Countryman. Silly enough to be fast when everyone else thinks it should be slow.

A JCW should be silly like a tabby with a lion’s roar, or a pigeon wearing eagle wings. There are parts of the new MINI JCW Countryman that are, like its frankly ludicrous, wide-mouth-frog grille that all-too-easily lets you see how much grille it actually needs. About a third of the grille is open and the rest of it is blanked off.

There are cute touches, too, like shifting the blinking red alarm light from the dash to the top of the shark-fin antenna on the roof, and yet more Union Jack flags everywhere (which may not age well after Brexit and for sure won’t be well accepted in Ireland).

It’s quick enough to wear the badge, though, with a 4.9-second sprint to 100km/h and a 250km/h limited top speed. Yes, 4.9 seconds. From a MINI. A MINI SUV. And that makes it 1.4 seconds faster than the old one.

Its new four-cylinder turbo motor cranks out 225kW of power and 450Nm of torque -- both huge leaps over their predecessors. That’s 55kW more than the old motor and another 100Nm of torque.

And, not coincidentally, it’s the exact same engine that debuted I the BMW M135i xDrive. Same eight-speed transmission and all-wheel drive set-up, too.

It creates a car that’s easily fast and effortlessly strong at every point in the rev range, with the torque peak’s plateau rising by 28 per cent. It now starts at 1750rm and pushes on to 4500rpm before trailing away. The power peak hits at 5000 revs and only starts to dip at 6250.

So the paperwork suggests it’s strong everywhere, and so it is. It’s flexible and strong and somehow not terribly cheerful about it.

Oh, it thumps it all out, but the standard noise is heavily muted and you’ve heard less synthesised John-Michel Jarre music than the sports mode’s engine note.

There are no issues with vibration or harshness with the engine, nor its noise levels when it’s cruising on a highway or meandering around town. It’s just the authenticity of the noise isn’t there, especially not after the air-raid alert scream of the original JCW’s supercharger.

For a sub-five-second car it doesn’t feel remotely like a car to be awed by, but more like a rapid gatherer of speed. And it can do it from any point in the rev range, in any gear.

So, for a machine the same size (more or less) as a Volkswagen Golf, you get Golf R performance with plenty of flexibility in the engine and the cabin.

MINI would love you to believe that it grabbed the 2.0-litre turbo motor from the Cooper S (and the outgoing JCW) and added a bigger turbocharger, ramped the compression ratio up to 10.2:1, dialled up the fuel pressure for the direct-injection system and ended up with heaps more gristle.

The reality is that all of that was done at BMW’s Fiz technical centre, because the engine is identical to the motor in BMW’s new M135i.

The result is a MINI that’s in the ballpark for performance with the Mercedes-AMG A 35 (BMW/MINI has no plans to go chasing the heavy-hitter A 45 that’s going to frighten dogs like fireworks on New Year’s Eve).

That means it’s too much engine for the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission MINI prefers in lesser offerings, so the eight-speed auto is pressed into service.

Compared to the junior MINIs (or, as some prefer, the mini-MINIs), it rides 10mm lower, gets man-sized brakes, has had its body stiffened up and scores that ridiculous new grille.

The interior is identifiably MINI, with toggle switches and a single round dial, but it’s more up-to-date than it looks, with always-on connected infotainment (with a dedicated 4G SIM), deep, supportive bucket seats and an 8.8-inch touch-screen.

It all works pretty well, but there are issues. The core ones seem to be just how hard the car rides in its sports mode and how much wind noise it generates around the windscreen pillars.

The MINI Countryman JCW is very, very hard. But for the most part, it feels very refined, with good control of the body’s roll tendencies and strong grip levels.

It has lost a lot of the pop, bang and aggression of the first one to the point where you wonder why they’d even bother with another generation of JCWs after this.

The only real sporty aggression in it comes not from actual, authentic performance, but from synthesising its engine note over the speakers to make it sound more intense inside.

It gets off the line incredibly well (and that’s even without using the launch mode) because the all-wheel drive system just bites and bites as it takes off.

It goes about as hard as the numbers suggest it should, and it will stretch out to its 250km/h limiter (though ours ran out to 266km/h in what MINI described as a final calibration issue). And it’s comfortable for most of that range, from zero to 250 (odd).

Only at very, very high speeds does the MINI JCW Countryman suggest it’s feeling some discomfort from the strain and, even then, it’s only from the aerodynamics messing with its front-end, rather than the engine running out of puff.

Its crushing powertrain is an easy pal around town (but its suspension calibration isn’t). The auto flits craftily through the gears in the default automatic setting but gets a bit enthusiastic in sport.

And did I mention that the suspension setting was far too hard for Frankfurt’s urban roads? Away from town, though, the overwhelming feeling is that the car has almost boundless grip and no trouble accessing it all.

The longer wheelbase helps its stability and assurance, but the mechanical front limited-slip diff works a treat and any punch it can’t handle is parcelled out to the rear-end.

The cornering feels flat, with very little body roll and with incredible stability from the rear-end. The braking is exceptionally strong and consistent, with the pedal standing up to repeated assaults on the four-piston fixed front callipers (on 360mm x 30mm discs).

The turn-in bite is impressive and composed, though there’s no real need for the steering weight to get sooo much heavier in sport mode.

It balances aggressive turn-in bite with a lack of nervousness, which is a difficult line to walk when you’re trying to turn your front-drive wagon-based JCW into a ‘go-kart’ handler.

The faster you go, the better the ride feels, too, as though it’s all engineered for the outer edges of its performance.

But the overwhelming feel is of a grip envelope that you’ll struggle to breach or unsettle. You can throw it in with all of its stability controls switched off and it will bite at the front, send you little corrective demands, then just grip and go with any level of power you want to give it.

It gets out of corners nicely, too, and is surprisingly quick through faster bends.

The faster you drive the car, the more the eight-speeder comes into its own in sport mode, snapping up and down the gearbox with remarkable alacrity, while the all-wheel drive system is the surprising highlight of the entire show – rather than the engine.

The interior of the MINI Countryman JCW is comfortable and has all the advantages of the standard model. But it all comes together as too refined, too coherent, too balanced to be true to the JCW heritage of MINI.

Maybe they were ashamed or embarrassed by the fizzing urgency of the earlier versions. Maybe it was because this is where the market research suggested buyers wanted it to go. Maybe it was a bit of both.

It’s faster, but it isn’t very interesting. It’s composed, rather than entertaining. Its very sharpness has made it almost dull to drive.

Thing is, there aren’t too many point-to-point runners in this market that will do what the MINI JCW Countryman does with its level of composure and comfort. Maybe it’s the A 35, and that’s it.

MINI has taken the old sports sedan trick of shoving a big engine into a (relatively) small car and come up with a grand tourer instead of GTI-type of car.

Maybe, just maybe, the car we are really waiting for is the JCW GP3 MINI hatch, with this engine in front-drive form. And that might be a bit too much.

Right now, as good as it is, the MINI Countryman JCW feels like too much Countryman and not enough JCW. But it’s your choice whether to believe the stopwatch or the seat of your pants.

How much is the 2019 MINI Countryman JCW?
Price: TBC
Available: Late 2019
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 225kW/450Nm
Transmission: eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Fuel: 7.4L/100km (WLTP)
CO2: 169g/km (WLTP)
Safety rating: Five star (2017 ANCAP)