I have a 2010 base cooper that I would like to get tuned. All of the out-of-the-box ecu tuners I look at are for the turbocharged s model. Does anyone know of anything I can do?

 

Buy an S. There really isn't much to be gained on a Cooper.

 

Battle Tuning can tune your ECU as well...

 

ECU tuners generally do very little for a non-boosted motor. On most turbocharged cars, they can raise the limit on boost, and make very noticeable gains that way, but that's not an option for our base Coopers.

In general, the factory didn't leave a lot of performance on the table when they built our engines. It is likely that any gains you see would either be very small, or would cut down on the safety margins of your engine and put you at higher risk of engine failure.

If you can upgrade the engine itself--for instance, with a high-flow tuned exhaust system--you can tune the engine management to use that most effectively, and then you may well see decent gains. If you have the head ported, possibly larger valves installed, and/or a cam swap, tuning the engine management is just about mandatory for the new setup to work effectively together.

But if you're not changing anything major, don't bother with the ECU tune on a non-Turbo Cooper.