MINI USA Launches the 2015 MINI JCW with $30,600 MSRP
Priced just hundreds of dollars more than its R56 predecessor (albeit with 23 more horsepower), the F56 JCW was officially introduced today at NAIAS. Does this give the new JCW a price versus performance equation that we’ve been looking for? The numbers look good but we’ll find out for sure later this year when we get behind the wheel.
Official release: The new 2015 MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop will make its World Premiere today at the North American International Auto Show, featuring the most powerful engine ever installed in a MINI production model. The latest high performance addition to the MINI line up will be priced at $30,600 plus $850 Destination & Handling in the U.S. and will go on sale in the spring.
The 2015 MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop will make its much-anticipated World Premiere with a grand introduction by none other than rally legend Rauno Aaltonen at MINI’s press conference in Hall D of the COBO Center, at 1:20 pm ET. Aaltonen will take the stage in a Classic Mini similar to the 1966 Mini Cooper S that he drove to victory in the famed Monte Carlo Rally in 1967.
With Aaltonen on hand and the new MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop in the spotlight, MINI proudly announced a new motorsports partnership with LAP Motorsports to compete in the Street Tuner (ST) class of the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge. The Indianapolis-based team owned and operated by racing veteran Luis Perocarpi will begin running the MINI John Cooper Works cars in the series later this year.
MINI’s long history of rally-car racing has always been reflected in the brand’s John Cooper Works performance series, and the newest Hardtop further extends that tradition. The latest edition in the premium line, the 2015 MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop offers the most powerful engine ever installed in the brand’s production models, delivering optimal performance to the premium small-car segment.
“This is undoubtedly an exciting time at MINI as we relaunch the John Cooper Works sub-brand as a true model in itself and with the most powerful engine we’ve ever had in a production model MINI,” said David Duncan, Vice President MINI of the Americas. “The new MINI John Cooper Works Hardtop will be an important part of our business moving forward, offering customers a premium high performance vehicle in a small package.”
Specially tuned for high performance on the track and on the road, the first John Cooper Works model to be built on the shared front wheel drive global architecture with BMW Group will be powered by the latest generation MINI TwinPower Turbo Technology four-cylinder engine. The car also features a sports exhaust, refined suspension technology and model-specific design features which not only optimize the car’s aerodynamic features, but also guarantee a fun and efficient ride with an irresistible temperament.
<p>Coincidence or deliberate? The same price as the original GP</p>
<p>Original GP was $31500 iirc. If the above JCW features (seats mainly) are standard as previously reported, this is going to look good.</p>
<p>Original GP was $30,600 plus delivery
<a href="http://www.gpmini.net/wp/2006/09/gp_window_specification_sticker/" rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.gpmini.net/wp/2006/09/gp_window_specification_sticker/</a></p>
<p>Your talking about the 1st Generation JCW, I was talking about the 2009 F-JCW. Anyway whatever the old price was, it’s looking this will be a nice price point considering all what this JCW includes.</p>
<p>No, I don’t have the exact price in 2009 but it was under 30k with shipping. I think your price was for the latest hatch JCW.</p>
<p>I’ve got my name in at the dealer…not ordered obviously, but first order in when available. Looking forward to it! Now to sell my Laurel…</p>
<p>My FJCW Coupe was $31,200 so I’ll welcome the new seats and having someplace to put little people for that extra $250.</p>
<p>F55 JCW coming soon….?</p>
<p>Nope.</p>
<p>Sadly.. very sadly… no</p>
<p>But there will be an F54 4WD JCW. High performance compact Sportwagons are the next big thing!</p>
<p>Any insight into the exhaust? There’s the John Cooper Works Pro valve silencer kit as an add on to the F56. Is the FJCW going to have the same functionality?</p>
<p>No. Like the R56, the accessory JCW Exhaust is a bit more extreme than the exhaust that comes with the standard JCW.</p>
<p>you thought the jcw accessory exhaust was more extreme than the factory jcw exhaust on the R56?</p>
<p>I’m not so sure i agree.</p>
<p>I thought the facotry one sounded better. iirc it also had one less cat and a different downpipe.</p>
<p>I had both. No question it was a better exhaust. That was MINI’s strategy.</p>
<p>The r56 accessory JCW exhaust kit was just a cat back wasn’t it? Where the R56 factory built JCW had a completely different exhaust from turbo back, correct?</p>
<p>I have a hard time understanding how basically just a muffler swap is better/extremer than ‘new down pipes, fewer cats, and new muffler’.</p>
<p>Take the parts off, hold them your hands, and you’ll understand.</p>
<p>I had both exhausts on my old R56 MCS – the factory exhaust was much, much louder – the accessory exhaust was quiet but better build quality. Factory every time for me..</p>
<p>Yup – the quality of the accessory exhaust is dramatically better.</p>
<p>Thing is, that today the F56 accessory exhaust seems to be louder than the F56 factory exhaust… “track mode” unavailable on the factory exhaust</p>
<p>I really liked the idea of having a Track Mod . Wish the FJCW ran with that concep .</p>
<p>If the seats come Standard along with The LED Headlights. I think that will be a Good Price Honestly. But I haven’t seen any official Word on the Seats.</p>
<p>Seats and LED headlights are standard.</p>
<p>Wow that’s Awesome then!!!! Also Gabe when do you think the Configurator for the JCW will come online?</p>
<p>knowing how slow they are to get the configurators live watch it not be until late march.</p>
<p>No there is a chance it will be online at the end of this week (on the german site)</p>
<p>The configurators in Europe are always up long before the MINIUSA configurators.</p>
<p>Almost 3 weeks later and it still isn’t on miniusa</p>
<p>The sellers do have it</p>
<p>Sellers?</p>
<p>In Europe yes, for 2 weeks</p>
<p>Have can you not yet have figured out I am neither talking about nor do I care about when it’ll be on any European configurators? Even if you did not know you are commenting on a USA website I have specified US in 3 my last three replies.</p>
<p>thank you for your kindness</p>
<p>Sill not online in the neither US nor (I checked for giggles) MINI UK.</p>
<p>No it’s not yet, MINIUSA, but if you rant to just look at it, put some colors together and see what the standard seats look like, check out: MINI.de, go to Kongiguration, then tap on mini 3door, then automatic, then you’ll get the John Cooper Works sport, tap on that and you’ll see the new JCW. That’s the best for now.</p>
<p>ok, so it happened early March instead of late March. I wasn’t that far off.</p>
<p>So is MINI going to have a JCW Pro package that one could have installed at the factory? <em>Please</em> It would seem that a JCW buyer should be able to get the most aggressive everything from the factory if desired.</p>
<p>I still can’t believe I just bought my R58 JCW. Any buyers? It has the JCW suspension ~1500 miles :-)</p>
<p>Gabe: are you going to get our questions answered from the previous thread soon? Just wondering when I should check for it.</p>
<p>Yes soon.</p>
<p>Gabriel can you steal me some Mini Swag from the event?</p>
<p>I second that!! I so wish I could attend.</p>
<p>Is it going to be available with the six speed automatic transmission?</p>
<p>Yes</p>
<p>Gabe, any idea as to if and when the 8/9 speed automatic will be available for the F series, especially the JCW?</p>
<p>This car already has the new Golf R beat on pricing. Will it beat it on the track? 300 ponies and 4Motion is a nice package. The price is arguably over the top, but build quality is superb and equivalent to premium Euro rides,</p>
<p>The first pre-order allocation for NA for the new 4WD Golf R, sold-out within 11 hours of going live! Autocar described it as “A landmark in performance car design”, and after driving one on a frozen lake, CAR said that they had so much fun they were looking forward to snow! A Golf R Sportwagon has also been given the green light.</p>
<p>BMW, however, has a new weapon in its armoury, and it’s called the MINI Clubman JCW, and is reported to develop around 300hp, with AWD. Compact high performance ‘Sportwagons’ are the next big thing, and BMW’s trend spotters have done their job well. MINI fans will soon understand why the Clubman had to grow.</p>
<p>reported where? be awesome if true but I don’t have my hopes up,</p>
<p>Oh ye of little faith!</p>
<p>Actually it’s been widely reported, not least on MF on August 18th.</p>
<p>MINI needs to do something to regenerate the level of consumer interest it once had. The GOLF R is a solid winner aside from its price. Its build quality and interior are also superbly crafted and uncluttered.</p>
<p>And boring. It’s big, weighs in the 3400 lbs with all wheel drive and it’s got two too many doors. Just my opinion, of course. MINI isn’t perfect but talk to VW GTI guys and you’ll get an ear full of their complaints too.</p>
<p>On a slightly different, but related subject: We always hear about how expensive the factory JCW always is, well it is really, but we know that we usually get what we pay for. So I went to the build it by MINIUSA and configured out, what I think I’d want extra on a factory JCW and came away with a MSRP of $35,650. That included the Wired Package, Cold PackageH/K radio and Siris, garage opener+auto mirrors, and a couple of other items. Not bad I thought, as my 2011 JCW came in at $35,550.</p>
<p>Now, I configured a MINI S with as close as I could come to t he same equipment, and what we know will be standard on the JCW. Actually I forgot to add the optional interior, as I didn’t know what to do there. That came to $35,242.</p>
<p>I could be a few dollars off, one way or another, but I thought that this was worth mentioning as price will become an arguing point somewhere in the future. Of course, take the Wired Package out the pricing, and you cut that down to $33,900, and that is just about what the options were on my 2011 JCW. Rather interesting.</p>
<p>Both GPs and this new JCW have been aggressively priced and are terrific values when you do the math. If you start with regular Cooper S models and then look add-on all the package pieces yourself (brakes, suspension, tuning, seats, etc.) it consistently comes out as more expensive than the price MINI offers out-the-door. It would appear that MINI is approaching JCW almost entirely from a standpoint of brand enthusiasm because they could reasonably be charging a lot more for these cars.</p>
<p>Nathaniel: You’re right, especially when you consider what MINI was requiring just a few years ago, for JCW’s that weren’t equipped anywhere even close to this new JCW. My 2011 didn’t have the JCW Aero package, I paid $1000 for the Red and Black leather/cloth seats. It was extra for halogen headlights, and the list continues.</p>
<p>I think that there’s a couple of ways that MINI is looking at this. First, they want to get these out into the market in numbers not seen before with the factory JCW. Second, MINI has competition in this category that wasn’t really there five years ago. Third, MINI has been accused of overpricing their cars, and even though this car will be in the mid $30’s equipped decently, it’s still a nice price when you consider Audi, BMW 2 series, the new Mustang turbo, ect. And give Ford have the chance they could bring the Focus RS here to the States, or VW could mess things up with a Polo GTI, or R series. That’d make things real interesting.</p>
<p>By the way, have you heard any pricing on the 3-gauge option yet? I’m guessing $500, but I could be off either way.</p>
<p>By the way, my pricing exercise didn’t include Brembo Brakes, the JCW tuning port option. but did include my estimate on the seats. Guess we could add another $3-$4K to that $33,250 estimate.</p>