I am an R53 junkie... I was very anti-F56 at first. I have since totalled my R53... My feelings have changed a bit. I see the tuning potential of this 2.0 and it is exciting! I think MINI owners will be able to take advantage of the offerings from the best BMW tuning outfits. Maybe DINAN will step up again... or Turner Motorsports... It's all very exciting. I'm curious if anyone has heard about modifying these yet...

 

expect a shitload. wouldn't even be surprised if AMS gets in the game. Turbo cars are so easy to make more power.

 

...it is kind of hard to modify a car which hasnt been released yet....

 

A lot of big name tuning companies get their hands on cars before we do. And there will R&D projects going on well before the release to the public. It's gonna be AWESOME!

 

Let's just not fall into the marketing ploy of buying parts that don't do crap for performance.

Hopefully with this engine, internal engine upgrades will actually become available......although I'm not too sure if the modification of this Gen will be as big, it only seems to get smaller. We are few and far.

Most of the threads are about visual stuff. Oh lala, I plasti dipped my trim

 

The potential would be there if they (BMW) wouldn't encrypt the ECU like it is some super secret nuclear reactor. It is kind of hard to throw engine parts at a car which can not be re tuned to utilize those parts.
I suspect there will be some decent suspension upgrades, and a whole lotta headlight eyelashes. :(

 

NOOOOO :( Don't say those words! lol I HATE headlight lashes! haha

 

Sad but true... With the face on the thing, its just a matter of time before somebody starts adding red grille surrounds and fake teeth to match!

Just go find another R53, and come back to us!

 

To me, technically, it would be interesting to see the detail design of the engine internal ventilation. If it addresses the carbon deposit problem with the current DI setup.

 

I'm hopeful, based on what I've gathered from the press reports, that the JCW will be an real power step up from the S. Kind of reading between the lines, the new 2.0 has lots of room for performance gains over and above what the advertised output of the S is. One author made that point I think in a MotoringFile (?) story. If BMW chooses to make the JCW something else again, there is room to do it. If they do, and depending on how they do it, there may not be such a flurry to mod for performance. I do realize of course that some owners will want to make it go faster just because and that's what it is all about when a car driven is a driver's car. I will remain hopeful until the new version JCW hits the showroom next year and the veil comes off.

 

Encryption isn't the problem. Remember the GTR's "untunable" ecu when it came out? Yeah, it was cracked and now for a few grand you can take one to north of 1000hp on the stock ECU. Also the C7 corvette ECU which was supposed to be untunable was cracked BEFORE the car was even released.

The mini market is tiny, and tuners don't tune for fun. They're going for the low hanging fruit and MINI's ain't where it's at. I would love to see lots of tunes for the F56, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

You're saying the MINI market for tuning is smaller than the Corvette?

 

I'm saying that encryption of the ECU's is commonplace on virtually all cars produced today. In the GTR and c7 both ECU's were reported to have some serious locks I place to prevent tuning, and yet they were both cracked by multiple tuners. Also, minis use similar ECU's as in BMW's and yet the BMW tuning market is much larger and often cheaper than the tunes available for minis.

The DME in a mini is nothing special. If Cobb or APR or any other big tuner wants to, they could have it cracked within a few weeks.

The market for mini tunes is certainly much smaller than that for the corvette. Consider that N18 cars have been out for almost three years and here are still not flash tunes available. The C7 (new generation) ECU's was cracked before the car was even on sale. I know I'm comparing apples to oranges, but the point I'm trying to make is that tuners don't want to invest the resources needed to tune for such a small market of cars.

Also, don't assume that the new 2.0 engine will have significant tunability due to its increased displacement. BMW uses the "same" N20 engine in he 328i Nd the 320i yet the 320i has been unable to reach 328i power leveled when tunes because they use weaker pistons and a smaller turbo. More displacement is a good thing, but BMW has ways of making sure they don't "leave much on the table" as some have suggested.