But let’s start with the basics. The GP is fast. And the sensation is so exhilarating that, if you aren’t burying the tach needle, you feel you’re letting down the car. It’s almost as if it deserves to be driven like you stole it constantly. The sensation of speed, the sounds coming from the exhaust, there are very few cars that are as immediately fun as the GP. One of the additions (or subtractions depending on how you look at it) was the reduction of sound deadening material in an effort to reduce weight. The affect is more road, engine and exhaust noise in the cabin. This is also helped by the lack of rear seats. The net result is a car that isn’t quite as road-trip friendly as the stock MC or MCS. It’s not what I could call loud but you rarely forget that you’re driving a narrowly focused performance car. The GP is also quite a bit lower to the ground than the stock MCS. The front air-dam in particular is exceedingly low. In fact I bottomed out several times simply driving on Chicago roads. And the side skirts aren’t much higher. To jack up the GP, you first must open the small “trap doors” on the bottom of the side skirts to reach the jack points. Then you have to insert the supplied orange blocks which effectively lengthen the jack points to protect the side skirts. To make matters worse the GP doesn’t include a standard MINI jack that typically comes with the cars as it would be incompatible with the orange blocks that extend the jack points. Needless to say fixing a flat should only be undertaken by an experienced person (or BMW dealer) with a low profile jack or an actual lift. It also means getting rid of the run-flats on the GP brings some interesting potential problems should an owner ever need to change a tire on the side of the road.

While all this makes for an great track car, what does it do for the general day to day livability of the GP? No, it may not be the right choice for those who need more than two seats occasionally. But for those who can look beyond that, this car does everything anyone could expect of it while feeling and sounding better (and yes badder) than any other factory MINI out there. It’s great with gas (despite the fact that I recorded 16.8mpg in my “rigorous” tests), it fits anywhere and it swallows luggage or groceries as well as a 3 series. One of the most loved attributes of the MINI is it’s ability to be a great track car while being versatile enough to act as a useful part of daily life. What MINI has done with the GP was to turn the performance portion up to 11 while keeping most of the versatility of the stock car intact. The net result is a truly special car that is hard not to fall in love with more and more each day. Simply put, the GP is the ultimate MINI.