JCW Sells 10,000th Engine Kit

So much for the allure of exclusivity…

So from Ian’s sales charts, that is 7.6% of all MINIs, or 15.6% of all MCSes. Not quite as exclusive as we were led to believe. But hey..I sure can’t blame anyone. :)

Oh OK I see now, Ian’s sales are for USA only..sorry Gabe :) Well it is believable seeing as it seems 20% are JCW that I know of.

10,000 is fairly exclusive, but many of us didn’t purchase our JCW kits for just the exclusivity. In fact, it really wasn’t a big consideration for me. I wanted the fact that it was a factory kit. Ultimately I wanted the value of the factory kit. I know it isn’t the cheapest, but after a year, I still think it was a good investment, and I would do it again.

I know this is antecdotal, but I have had a number of people, who were not Mini owners, come and talk to me outside of restaurants and the mall about the JCW kit. They see the badges and know enough about it to briefly talk about it. That is the kind of cache the kit has. I never had anyone walk up to me out of the blue and said “Hmmm, that is one of the Mini’s with a 15% reduction pulley isn’t it?” (except for other Mini owners at a meet). I didn’t get the kit so I could talk to strangers about it, but it does carry an interesting perspective on the car.

I know at the 5,000 mark, JCW said that they had not experienced a single failure on any of their kits. I wonder if this still holds true at the 10,000 mark.

I had the JCW Brake Kit installed on my car in August 2005. I had it removed after three weeks. I had done one track day (HPD) during that time and both JCW rotors warped (no other spirited driving). I had the 18″ JCW Wheels with Proxies 4 tires. (I had done four track days with the stock brakes and never had any warping…)

After contacting MINI USA and JCW I was told that the JCW brakes are designed for “mildly spirited” driving. Not for use for road rallies or high performance driving of any kind.

I put Wilwoods on and have been very happy.

I got the JCW kit because I wanted the performance and am one of those types that will not really add anything to car for the next 10 years. Since I knew I would basically need to order it with what I wanted or forever live without I decided to go for it. I didn’t (and don’t) care about the whole exclusivity thing. I think of JCW like most options, they don’t add a ton to the re-sale value of the car and are more for the person buying it than anyone.

James,

you have a rare kit indeed. I have never seen another JCW MC. That is pretty cool and if you hold onto it, it will probably be worth something, probably more than the kit cost to put on.

Ceridian,

I may have to beg to differ with you. The JCW kit will add more to the resale of the kit than any other option that you can purchase for the car. You may still not get a 100% back, but you can get pretty close to it.