A Mini adventure: exploring Yorkshire in a John Cooper Works

We’ve praised this car before on these pages, even if it pursues its performance with some wantonly rough edges. ’Twas ever thus with JCW-badged cars, but the vigour of their damping appears to have reached a whole new level here. Over a standard Cooper S the suspension uses bespoke springs and dampers, plus more negative camber on the front wheels, to more keenly point you into corners, while its four-cylinder ‘B48’ engine has 228bhp and 280lb ft peaks for 0-62mph in 6.1sec.

The big headline, however, goes to its gearbox. The JCW is now offered only with a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic ’box – yes, the manual Mini hot hatch is dead. Indeed, the manual petrol hot hatch as a whole.

My wistfulness is soon decimated by the madcap Mini’s turn of pace. Without the minor pause of a clutch dip and a flick of your wrist, it snarls forward insatiably, and you’ll encounter brief moments of wheelspin or torque steer if you try to deploy too much of its potency on cool or damp surfaces – there’s no clever differential set-up here to smooth the edges.

It’s a boisterous bucking-bronco of a car over the crests and into the dips of the roads that lead us inland, but it’s hard not to be enraptured by the experience. You’ve no choice but to get stuck in.

Our next stop lies 18 miles south, and it is an essential visit for any petrolheads in the area. Oliver’s Mount is England’s only road racing course that’s open to the public, and it’s a chance to pop the Mini between some painted kerbing with no need for a helmet or race boots.

The track hosted its first race in 1946 – a celebratory affair to welcome home the troops of World War II – and essentially morphs a tight and twisting park service road into a quite fearsome circuit. Its 2.43 miles span 10 corners, and in the heat of its motorcycle races, riders reach 150mph; repeated 30mph signs ensure our pace is much calmer today.

Yet with the grid markings upon its start/finish straight, its domineering control box and a roll of honour awash with Isle of Man TT legends, it won’t be long before your ears pick up the phantom buzz of highly strung engines and stratospheric rev limits in the air.

We simply have to indulge in a lap. Starting from the grid, we barrel straight into the supremely tight Mere Hairpin. TT hero and unlikely TV star Guy Martin describes notching back from fourth gear (and 130mph!) to tackle the first turn, so I channel some of his spirit with a rambunctious run through the JCW’s raucous first gear on exit.

The seven-speed ’box isn’t exactly the star of the show – I’m finding it desperately hard not to miss a manual – but a set of pleasingly short ratios means you can meaningfully flick-flack up and down its paddles at will. Oliver’s corners are a hedonistic mix, and its tree-lined sections through Sheene’s Rise and Drury’s Hairpin feel ominous in the context of the race speeds achieved through them – there’s perilously little run-off.

Those striped kerbs make this two-way road feel all too much like an actual racetrack today, so I work hard to keep my enthusiasm in check. Luckily the Mini is generous with its character – a euphemism for ‘blooming bolshy’ – at even these speeds, ensuring a sensibly driven lap still feels scintillating.

The famed Yorkshire spirit is alive and well up here too, an approaching runner zig-zagging to clear geese from the road to ease our progress. I suspect that doesn’t happen quite so often in London’s Royal Parks…

It would be easy to stay up here all day, Scarborough perched below us, but it’s the empty moorland roads inland that drew us here in the first place. So after a quick run past the town’s chintzy amusements and seafood shacks, we head off to explore. Not before being held up in an unlikely jam, though, our progress entangled with that of the Three Coasts Vintage Tractor Run.

Perhaps 550 miles between Liverpool and Whitby on one of these would make the Mini feel more urbane. Even pottering through traffic there are huffs and whistles from its engine and a choreographed popping of its exhaust in sportier drive modes.

While the sounds don’t always tally with the alacrity of its performance, the JCW offers a more bewitching character than its recently launched electric twin – whose extra 320kg and even sterner ride would make progress tough before any range anxiety had crept in.

Clear of our curious snarl-up, I drop a few gears and extend the Mini’s powertrain. Its muscular torque easily overcomes a kerb weight that looks portly in the context of its predecessors.

Out of town and with more forces working its damping, the ride doesn’t feel quite so uproarious, and it’s hard not to beam at the sight ahead: enveloped by the rolling hills and fields around us, the Tarmac dips and rises ahead in perfect harmony with the landscape.

The roads surrounding the brutalist structure of RAF Fylingdales are dreamlike – if you can avoid the trundling tour buses ready to swarm the Goathland tea rooms like wasps around a freshly garnished scone. Just watch out for the sheep…

Perhaps a rip-snorting little Mini is a mite too brash for the beauty of the roads we’re on – a freshly polished classic MG or Healey might be more befitting of the scene we’ve entered. But the JCW’s dinky size and easily won performance quickly banish those worries. You can lean hard into its limits, feel grip come and go at both ends and start to work with its agility.

It’s nowhere near as nuanced as the very best of the hot hatch pack – oh, how we sorely miss the Ford Fiesta STs and Hyundai i20 Ns of this world – but it’s not short of spirit up here, and working around its rough edges brings its own unorthodox satisfaction.

The all-time great performance cars typically meet you at your level, enhancing and elevating you with them. This JCW falls into a somewhat more rough ’n’ tumble category of cars that demand you play along to their tune.

It’s a car that feels happiest and sharpest when you start to throw it around a bit, at which point its ragged character starts to make more sense. Modern Works Minis were always the brasher, more uncouth offerings in the hot hatch sector, of course, but the party around this one has emptied so rapidly – the much meeker Volkswagen Polo GTI is its closest ICE-powered rival – that the JCW now stands for resilience as much as for its rapscallion attitude.

There’s plenty of professionalism inside. Its interior is a bouquet of idiosyncrasy – as is the modern Mini way – but with a convincing tech overhaul and confident material choices. The vast OLED screen is a real standout, whatever you think of its dinner-plate dimensions and the fact that Apple CarPlay sits as a crude box among it.

Mini’s sense of humour has never dimmed – indeed, it’s increasingly crucial in the face of swelling Chinese competition. A fresh highlight comes from your doubtless rare flicks into ‘Green’ mode, which animate either a hummingbird or cheetah on the screen depending on how efficiently (or otherwise) you’re driving.