A John Cooper Works On All Fours With Love Handles

How long will it take for a Mini-branded vehicle to cross the two-ton threshold? We already have the four-door Countryman and it's a small crossover, so how far off is a tall and longer Mini with third-row seating? Say what you like about the Countryman, though; the best expression for how it's selling in the United States and just about everywhere else is "like hotcakes." It's the same love-hate situation with Porsche and its wildly successful Cayenne revisited, albeit at a cuter and more affordable dimension.

Honestly, though, as much as we dive with enthusiasm into any John Cooper Works model, we have to admit that Mini is really stretching the definition of its JCW brand with this – at minimum – 3,260-pound Countryman John Cooper Works. With the optional six-speed automatic, it weighs in at 3,315 pounds. To help set off the high-riding heft, Mini/BMW has fitted its new 1.6-liter N18 transverse turbo four-cylinder, good for 215 horsepower and 207 pound-feet of torque. The non-adaptive standard sport suspension is also more rigid and brings the JCW four tenths of an inch closer to Earth than more ordinary Countrymans (Countrymen?). Our test car carried the standard 18-inch wheelset dressed in Pirelli P Zero treads – 225/45 R18 91V front and rear – though a 19-inch setup is available as an option. (Hint: The 18-inchers do the job nicely).

It's pretty clear that Mini knows it's stretching the Works shrinkwrap just to see how far it can market its aura before buyers reject it. So far, however, the Mini stratagem is going undeniably well. Yet however much we played on the roads in and around Germany's Taunus region north of Frankfurt, we wanted more of a sense that this largest of all JCWs is getting trickle-down benefits from the 2,650-pound Countryman-based Prodrive World Rally Championship car. No, we don't really expect the entire rear seating setup to be ripped out, the front seats to go carbon fiber shell and down to the very floor, or for a production Countryman JCW to come with a navigating co-pilot barking orders at us in Europese. But for us, the final product does not feel quite 'Works' enough to wear the label. This Countryman JCW is a terrific sporty compact CUV that gets to 60 mph in just under seven seconds, but throttle oomph and the side-to-side movements of the chassis go much further away from "crisp" than we want in a Works-branded car.

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