After giving up my ‘09 base to my daughter when she turned 16 I bought myself a replacement. A bit of a gamble, but I bought a 2011 JCW with the N14. Its in great shape with excellent maintenance records.

 

Congrats on the purchase! Make sure to check your VIN, to see if it's a MCS with kit, or a factory JCW. Helps a bit when you start looking for parts to add/swap/replace.

 

I ran the VIN and it’s authentic JCW.

 

Congrats it looks great

 

Nice JCW - great color combination! What do you notice the most converting from the base?

 

Great looking replacement.

 

A whole different car, well mostly. The base I gave my daughter was an automatic. The JCW is a six speed manual. I usually drive in sport mode all the time, I like the pops and burble. It has an aftermarket exhaust but I don’t know which one. The differences in driving are as follows:
1. It sounds much different
2. Shifting vs auto, I like the manual
3. It’s faster, much faster
4. The speedo is only off by 3mph instead of 5 in the base
5. A little bit of torque steer up around 5g
6. It doesn’t rattle as much as the base ‘09

That’s all for now. I’ve not has the chance to really test out the suspension. Looking forward to taking it up in the mountains.

 

Welcome to the jcw club point 4 is interesting, I always thought the speedo correction was a percentage of the speed (~5%), not a constant number difference. Maybe due to the different size tires you see the difference in speed correction. Around 80 more hp than the base, I bet it feels way faster!!

 

Thanks. What I find really interesting about the speedo is that it is accurate at about 25 mph and under. At 30, about 2 mph off, at 35 about 3 off, at 40 and above 5 off. (Speedo is faster than actual). This is on the base, I’ve not checked the JCW that closely yet. I’ve been using a gps for checking so that may no be exactly accurate either.

 

My speedo is off as well, about 2 mph high around 35 and about 4 at 65.

On the mountains, a friend and I are always trying to get some Day Runs as we can hit some good twisites in about 2 1/2 hours. Mount Airy, NC is good starting off point and I have even thought about spending a night up in Marion Va. so that both the Back of Dragon and the Snake can be hit on Day 2.

 

I had my digital speedo re-coded to be closer to accurate - and it matches my GPS speedo pretty well. As far as I know, there isn't anything you can do to fix the analog speedo other than change tire size.

 

The truth is there is really nothing to compare even between a base and S and furthermore a JCW.


The only thing they have in common in HT configuration is excessive body flex and as you said...... rattles.


I don't care about the speedo accuracy as I care much more about the JCW power and torque, brakes, suspension and handling and frame dynamics/ body stiffness of the Coupe as far as I am concerned.


I drive on mountain roads most of the time and yes, I could not even think I would have to go through the pain of an A/T shifting all the time from a so small engine when driving fast.