Promini

The monthly magazine Eurotuner features Promini's tricked out MINI “Bluethunder” in a battle of various cars ranging from a 911 Turbo to a vintage early 90's Corrado. Here's an excerpt:

“In the September '03 issue of eurotuner we held our first annual eurotunerGP challenge. The idea was a simple one: invite tons of tuners out to battle on the dyno and track with whatever car they wanted to bring–as long as it was a European automobile. The results were interesting.

…MINIs are cute little cars that can’t perform. Just look at them. With a teeny wheelbase and an even smaller displacement motor, the car can only look good-or so everyone thought.

Having a MINI of our own, we knew power was difficult to pull from the supercharged 1.6L motor. Our MINI, on a good day, could only power down a lethargic 160 horses to the wheels. That’s enough power to make the car snappy around town, but we knew that 160 supercharged horses in a somewhat heavy car and at a very hot track wouldn’t cut it. Then PROMINI pulled onto the dyno, popped the trunk, and PROMINI owner Al Hafner pulled out a cube of dry ice and dropped it into a custom trunk enclosure. What the hell was he up to?

To harness more power than should be possible from the tiny displacement motor, PROMINI was pulling more tricks than a hooker. First, the company had freed up the exhaust side of the motor with a complete Supersprint head-back exhaust, then a smaller pulley was bolted to the Eaton supercharger to up the boost from the factory 10 psi to a more potent 15 psi.

Making sure the car was fully capable of using every pony its tiny cylinders could muster, PROMINI installed Tarox ten-piston front calipers, BMP strut braces, polyurethane bushings, adjustable damper mounts, adjustable end links connected to H&R sway bars, and correctly adjusted H&R coilovers.

On the track, the MINI managed to rattle off good enough times to place the car Fourth overall, but within an hour, the car had dropped over four seconds from its lap times, and PROMINI was positioned in Third place, only 0.088 seconds behind ABD. …the cute little car beat six of the other eight cars, four of which had oodles more horsepower than the MINI.” -Philip Royle

You can read the entire article in this months Eurotuner and portions of it on their website: The Eurotuner GP Challenge.