MF Garage: Open Top Showdown. Roadster vs. Moto
It’s no secret that our MotoringFile long-term review car, a MINI JCW Roadster, has won us over to open top motoring. Between the grunt of the turbo, the overall refinement of the...
MF Review: The MINI Paceman Cooper S All4
The Paceman lies in a space between expectations. Too large to be a proper MINI and too small to be a truly utility-focused vehicle. That's what I heard time and time again from friends and bystanders during my week with the R61 MINI. It's got two doors in the space of four and it's got mass in places that MINI's historically haven't had it. Yet why do I like it so much?
MF Garage: The JCW Roadster Road-trips North and Into Our Hearts
Heading north on Michigan’s famous M22, I realized something about our little JCW Roadster. In all my years of driving all sorts of cars, I can’t remember bonding with a car more...
MF Vault: The MINI Clubman First Drive
Welcome to MF Vault. Where we bring you the best of vintage MotoringFile in an effort to look back and maybe even re-evaluate. Five years ago there was no Clubman. There was...
A Day Out at the Autobahn Country Club
Recently the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, IL, invited our sister site BimmerFile to experience a few of the ways that the public can enjoy a little of what the club has...
MF Garage: Is the MINI JCW Roadster the Best Commuter Car Ever?
Bold claim for sure. But the recent warm and sunny weather in Chicago has me thinking the JCW Roadster may just represent the best every day car money can buy. Obviously, a...
MF Garage: Our Roadster’s First Spring Road-trip
With a quickly packed bag in the trunk and the Valentine 1 mounted on the windshield, the MINI Roadster and its first spring road trip gets underway just as the sun begins...
MF Garage: The JCW Roadster Tackles Winter
When we took possession of our long term JCW Roadster we told you we wanted to find out if the soft-top could indeed be an everyday, all year car. In the sun...
Review: MINI Paceman Cooper S ALL4
MINI is a car brand that means a lot of different things to a great many people. For some, it’s about economy. For others, it’s style. For many, MINI is about performance....
MF Review: Driving the JCW GP in the Wild
This week I had the opportunity to not just drive the 2013 MINI John Cooper Works GP, but drive it on real, imperfect roads. Specifically, I was able to put the car through its paces on the narrow, rough mountain roads outside Ponce, in Puerto Rico. Gabe drove this limited edition car for the first time in Spain a few months back as part of the international product launch, but that was on the track. Impressive as the car was in that context, we both wondered what the car would be like in the wild.