In shopping for a new Mini for my wife I came upon a mostly loaded JCW demo at a great price. Long story short, I flew to Toronto on Thursday morning to pick it up and drove it home to New Brunswick over the weekend.

Some bad pics I took tonight after washing off 2000 km worth of bugs and grime:













Like I said, it's mostly loaded. Sticker was almost $50k CAD but I got $11k off. Here's the build:



This is replacing my 2015 GTI, which has been a fantastic car. Very reliable, fun to drive, luxurious, and practical. I had actually been shopping for a CPO 335i but this deal was too good to pass up. I've always liked the Clubman but they are expensive and an S is slow compared to the GTI so I never imagined I'd actually get one.

I love the colour combo. It's certainly unique and looks great with the black wheels. I'm happy that this one has the 18" wheels and dynamic damper control as I live on a pretty rough road.

The spec is very close to what I would have chosen myself. It has all six of the option packages offered in Canada plus some miscellaneous options. I am going to miss the auto high beams that my GTI has though. Being an early build it also lacks Apple CarPlay but being able to display incoming texts (or have them read) is great and the integration with Spotify is pretty good.

So far I'm loving the car. Lots of power and it sticks very well to the road. It's a lot of fun. I love the JCW seats too.

I do have some complaints, mainly about small aspects of the interior. The lack of coin or sunglasses holders is really annoying. Not being able to skip tracks with the steering wheel buttons is just dumb. I also wish the HUD was on the windshield as on BMWs. The popup screen is a bit cheap looking and reminds me of the Mazda 3 I recently test drove.

But this car has a ton of personality to make uo for that, something that was a bit lacking in the GTI. I feel like the GTI is probably the objectively better car but the Clubman JCW is far more interesting. Looking forward to my next three years with this car.

 

I'm curious, as I'm also a previous Mk7 GTI owner (amazing car), what made you spend that kind of money on the mini instead of getting a Golf R.

I have a hardtop S and was tossing around the idea of a Clubman JCW but at the same cost or MORE than a Golf R it makes it a real tough sell for me personally. The Golf R performance is miles ahead of the Clubman.

I'm not taking anything away from the Clubman JCW as I'm sure it's amazing (never driven one) but the cost and performance is out of proportion to the cars it's constantly compared to.

 

Looks great!

 

Well first off, the Golf R is a non-starter for me because you can’t get one with a sunroof.

I also got a crazy good deal on this car. The discount I got and the 0.75% lease rate makes for a lower monthly lease payment than the GTI.

 

The guys at mini Durham are great. Got my car from them as well.

 

What do you mean you can’t skip tracks with the steering wheel buttons? I have that option on my Clubmans and it works just fine. I also have a sunglasses holder in the center console and the spot for coins is under the USB outlet between the center stack and the cup holders, but Sylvia has the wired package, so she does not have the sunglasses holder.

 

looks great! nice colour.. mine is very similar but in moonwalk grey and with the 19's
in aus it comes with auto high beams standard... strange..

I can skip tracks with the steering wheel controls.. but its a bit odd, press up on the right side then the center button

let me know if you want a cheap dinan sport module ��

 

you can't skip tracks when you play music over bluetooth from your phone. I tried many times and it doesn't work. Also if you have your songs on random on your phone, the centre display can't display the name of the song properly.

 

For whatever reason the steering wheel buttons don't work when streaming via Bluetooth. Super annoying.

I'd rather not leave a bunch of coins out in the open and invite some lowlife to break into the car.

 

Congrats! Good color choice

 

Thanks! Probably gonna get the Dinan Elite at some point.

 

nice!.. great color combo

 

Ah... gotcha. I actually have that same problem as well. It’s just a habit for me to plug my phone in when I get in my car. It does work via Bluetooth occasionally. I believe there is a trick to it that I have not figured out yet and I think it’s that I have to be more patient and wait for the head unit to catch up to my phone and determine which way the device is connected and then do everything through the head unit so it does not get confused later.

As far as the coins, that’s a good point. I learned from a member here a while ago that the best way to make sure that people don’t break into your car is just to have absolutely nothing in it and keep it very clean. If you keep your interior spotless, then people are going to peek in, see nothing and move on. I always gather up my coins and toss them in my coin pouch before I get out of my car.

 

Alright, I figured out how to skip tracks with the steering wheel buttons while streaming over Bluetooth and it's quite odd. If I press the up or down arrows, I see the current track name along with next/previous options in the HUD. So if I click up or down I can go back and forth between tracks. But oddly enough, if I turn the HUD off and click up or down, I get the "unavailable" message. Very strange.

 

I noticed the same thing... And i add this: i connected an ipod touch that uses spotify and i cant change the song from the steering wheel (But from the stereo buttons yes) and it gives me the same message: "unavailable" .

I think it's a bug in the system... On my older R60 (even without mini connected) it worked flawlessly... Very strange