I just picked up a 2021 jcw clubman and I have a couple of questions. I am quite tall and had to special order a clubman without a sunroof for additional headroom. When it came in, I was surprised to see the 2021 model. I picked a fairly stripped out car with standard dampers, no sunroof, and not many other options. If I could have gotten green paint without paying an arm and a leg or if I could have gotten Android Auto, I would have a much longer option list. On the other hand, this is my fourth red mini so keeping the trend going was nice too. My last car was a heavily modified r53 jcw so I am used to few features, lots of sound and a stiff suspension.

• Considering I have standard dampers, does sport mode do anything that affects the car's performance? I don't like how it makes the gas pedal feel like a light switch. It is either on or off and hard to modulate. Is it possible to divorce the throttle mapping from the rest of the sport mode settings?
• I am not pleased with the sound of the exhaust. In sport mode, with the windows down, at 55mph and 4K revs, I can't hear the exhaust over the wind noise.
• It is difficult to pull away from a stop sign with urgency. If I am at a full stop and press the gas, nothing happens. Then I give it more gas. Then the car goes into gear for half a second, then it downshifts. The car sometimes sets off 2 seconds after I press the gas pedal. This is my first automatic car in about 8 years so I can't tell if this is normal or if I am doing something wrong.
• Has anyone run 245 or 255 section tires with 18" wheels on a clubman? I am curious where the car limits tire size. The 245/40 tire is half an inch taller than stock and the 255/35 is significantly wider.

The car has been great so far. My 2 year old loved it until he got overstimulated and fell asleep. We are hoping to get through the break in period by mid December so we can take it to the last autocross of the year.

 

Sport Mode: There isn't any way in stock form to modify the throttle mapping for sport mode. Personally I only use green mode or sport mode. Not much point in my book for normal mode. That said, if you don't like the sport mode throttle response have you driven much in normal mode?

Exhaust: Sounds like you will want an aftermarket exhaust

Stop sign: are you in manual shift mode when this happens? i.e. are you pulling up in "M3" or "M4", then the car would need to downshift. if you're in the pure automatic mode, not manually shifting, there should be no need for the car to downshift. Also if you're in sport mode, there should be no real lag to depressing the gas and the car moving forward.

 

Except for a few stop light/onramp pulls, I have kept it in normal mode in automatic. The car feels better in sport mode with sport transmission setting. Making half of the throttle pedal useless sucks though.

At stop signs, I give the car 25% throttle in normal mode with the transmission in automatic. The car thinks for a while, then sets off at 3 mph with little acceleration capability. If I give it any more throttle, it waits even longer to set off while it decides to downshift. The feel is fine in sport transmission mode or if I manually downshift to 1st gear. This is my first automatic in about 8 years so I am not sure if I am doing something wrong.

 

Yep, that's how normal mode works. In green mode, the delay is even longer.

I personally can't stand the throttle response in normal, so I drive in sport always.

 

That is disappointing. I really prefer 40% gas pedal to equate to 40% throttle open. In sport mode, 40% gas pedal is about 90% throttle open. I find it harder to make small corrections with the shorter 0-100% pedal distance. Everything else about sport mode is where I want it.

 

Sport mode does give a very steep throttle tip-in as compared to normal mode, I get that. Adding the Dinan Sport module has certainly accentuated that, where you end up getting a much heavier boost down low...luckily the All4 helps translate that into motion. I wonder if there is any way to code out that throttle tip-in portion of the 'sport' setting??

As for the thinking about taking off, not sure what all is included in the delay. My '17 S All4 has a delay in movement when I release the brake and just idle away, as if the brakes have a slight delay in releasing the calipers. This is something the car does 100% of the time, regardless of green/normal/sport setting. I don't notice much of a delay when scooting off from the line, except for one particular situation. That situation is when you come to a quick/almost rolling stop and jump back in the throttle to slip into that tight little gap in the traffic line. My former Subie Legacy and current Mini seem to get caught in some sort of decision making 'fog' and you not only end up with a HUGE (2-5 second) delay in throttle response, but you get stuck at ~5% throttle in 2nd gear. This is TERRIFYING when trying to jump into that tight slot in traffic to say the least. There have been a couple of times I have had to completely release the throttle and re-stomp on it to get an appropriate action out of the vehicle. I am guessing it may be that 'Lexus safety' setting that no longer allows brake and throttle to be applied simultaneously, even though you are not hitting both at the same time, there may not be enough delay between the two and it 'locks' the throttle to some nominal value along with the gear selection (??). Not sure if your experience is quite this or something else, but you should be aware of it just in case.

 

The good news is that even in normal drive mode and mid engine mode, a downshift to first with the paddle fixes the launching issue for me. At least on my stock 2021 car.

I am going to run the car in street class autocross this season so I can't change any programming for now. I will look into it once I decide to stop autocrossing the car seriously.

Once I have put the car into manual mode, what is the best way to go back to automatic mode? The only consistent way I have found so far is to bump the transmission level left/right twice. If it is on the right, it will eventually go back to automatic if you coast for a few seconds. In sport mode, it just sits at whatever rpm it is at without upshifting.

 

Silly question, but regarding the stop sign delay in launching: is your car's auto-stop-start feature turned on (the default setting)? You might notice, but might not notice, that the engine shuts off when you come to a stop; the delay you see might be caused by the engine having to turn over and start.

I drive a manual with the radio turned off most of the time, so it's pretty obvious when the auto-stop is doing its thing; might be missed if you're new to the car and are playing your music loud/not paying attention to the tachometer, though...

 

Yeah turn it off. 😀

 

Selecting modes doesn't affect suspension at all if your car isn't eqipped with EDC. I agree on your impressions on gas pedal/throttle response (even giving the fact there's no real throttle due to Valvetronic) in sport mode. To me sport mode is useless, despite I understand some like it.
Which tires did your JCW come with? I prefer Michelin PSS and PS4S non-runflats and I guess 245 or eben 255 wide tires will hardly fit without rubbing, while 235/40 R18 on 8x18 should be a worthwhile option.

 

Start/stop is definitely off. The car turns into a sauna in florida, even in December.

I picked up a second set of wheels and 235/40 autocross tires (falken 660). The next set will be wider if I can find a tire shop to mount a tire with a lot of pinch on an 8" wheel. I will switch to the ps4s or the continental ecs for my daily and wet autocross tire in the spring.

 

My 2017 All4 S is a manual and the throttle lag from idle sucked. I got a Sprint Booster and that has made a tremendous difference. While it does not increase HP, it does eliminate the lag. The V3 is adjustable for the response you want. Should be plenty of posts about it on NAM....

 

I don't understand what sprint booster does. I want to use all of the pedal travel to modulate the throttle, not just the first half. This is my big problem with sport mode on my car.

If the graph below is correct, I think the throttle mapping from the sprint booster is what I am trying to avoid.

 

Yes, that graph is correct. It's just fake and moving your right foot would do exactly the same, but some people still like it.
Actually the sprint booster doesn't improve or even affect throttle response at all. It just provides the imagination to do so.
So-called throttle response is how quick the engine responses on changes from one (lower) engine load to a higher load.
To improve this you'd need to do some substantial changes on the engine, flywheel and ECU itself. One issue with this in
case of BMW/Mini engines is that Valvetronic isn't infinitely quick. A healthy driver's right foot isn't be the weak link here,
but if one's foot is real slow when depressing the pedal, it might even help.

 

You're an autocrosser so you get it, but most people don't floor their pedal (gasp!). So these devices make their cars faster, as they'd never otherwise open it all the way up.

I was a competitive SCCA autocrosser and road racer for 25 years. I thought about autocrossing my Clubman soon after I bought it almost 5 years ago. But then I looked at the classing and the weight and decided it'd probably be a letdown. I hope for you I'm wrong!

As far as sport mode goes ... I don't have the dynamic shocks so sport mode really just affects the throttle and the exhaust (maybe steering boost too?). I really like the louder deeper tone and pops and burbles of the exhaust (even if it's all artificial) so I've adapted my brain to the awkward pedal response. I've coded it to stay on.

 

I just ran the first autocross in the car. It took us the full two weeks to get through the break in miles. Florida's coronavirus plan makes it hard to get out.

I ran on a brand new set of Falken 660 tires. I had run primarily run on Rivals in the past with a few runs on RE71s. These felt a lot more like RE71s to me. The grip level was good though the car understeered instead of rotating no matter what I did. I ran the fronts at 38 psi to avoid rollover on fairly low grip asphalt. Next time I run at this site, I can go a little lower but I will increase the rear tire pressure to make the backend more lively.

I didn't realize that 2nd gear ended at 51 mph. The car is so quiet that my wife and I had trouble determining when the car was about to hit red line. The fuel cut there is pretty jarring and is followed by decelerating until a manual upshift. We ended up running in sport/automatic mode. If there is a stock transmission mode that will upshift automatically after a manual downshift, I am extremely interested. If I could go back and change one thing on the car, it would be to add the HUD which blinks at you as you approach the red line. I think I am going to install a shift light unless I can find a dual mod exhaust with a louder "loud" side.

We haven't figured out how build boost before launching the car. It means that on this course we gave up some time at the start with not much lead up to the start lasers. The car sets off at the same speed no matter what I do with the throttle. In my video below, I floor it at 0:02 and it hits 20 mph at 0:05. Is there a way to build boost without going through the full launch procedure? In a manual car, I would hold it at 3500 rpms in neutral, then feather the clutch for the start. I am not sure how to do that in this car without hurting things. For reference, we want to do this 10 times in an hour, once a month, for the entire time that we own the car. Launch control with 100 total launches allowed isn't going to work.

I ended up in 5th place in PAX, about 2 tenths behind the winner. My wife was a little further back as she is getting used to the straight line speed. Our cornering speeds are similar but she is lifting earlier than I am on the straight bits.
My fast run: My wife's fast run:

 

We must have different cars (I have a 2020). Mine has NO throttle hesitation. You said you car hits 20mph at :05 when you floor it. Mine hits about 60mph at 5 seconds just like the spec sheet says. And my exhaust in Sport mode is pretty loud too especially under throttle, it makes a little extra burpy noise when it upshifts too. Both left and right exhaust pipes are open in Sport.

 

On my wife's autocross run above, she bumps the downshift paddle around 0:25, then bounces off the limiter for about a second at 0:36. From the position of the camera, there is no change in volume coming from the intake or exhaust as the car approaches and hits the limiter.

Compare that to this video where I ride the limiter from about 0:28 to 0:34 at a similar speed in my old Mini. There is an audible change in the engine note even with all the wind noise.
As far as standing starts go, here was my procedure on the day. Let me know if I was doing something wrong
- Sport mode on
- Transmission in sport/automatic
- Traction control full off (5 second press)
- AC off
- Collision warning/pedestrian warning off
- start/stop off
- Pull up to the line
- Wait 30-40 seconds with one foot on the brake
- Move the foot off the brake and hard down on the gas pedal

For the first full second and 10-15 feet, the car just rolled forward. There was a slight incline so that may have contributed. Once the car got on boost it was pretty quick. The bad news is I lost a tenth or two on the start because I rolled through the timing lasers at 3 mph.

 

Pictures from the event were uploaded. The right front took a beating on this event. Here are the ones with the most exciting camber.

 

Dynamic dampers might have helped that problem. (I like mine)

 

When I read the marketing material, it suggested that the dynamic dampers were not as stiff as the sport suspension, even in the stiff setting.

Either way, it is a strut based suspension sitting on the bump stops. It is going to look pretty silly unless you run a whole bunch of camber.

 

I wonder if the starting lag is due to the car being AWD? It might have a different gearbox compared to the FWD?

 

Here are more impressions after owning the car for 3 months.

The car is safe, fast, and fun to drive on regular roads. It is easy to lift my 2 year old in and out. When he feels like it, he can climb in on his own. We have taken several hour trips with 4 adults, 2 over 6' tall, and the kid with only minor legroom issues.
I am about to complain a lot. I am used to buying cheap cars and fixing their problems. I am still coming to terms with buying an expensive car and getting used to the problems.




The little hexagons in the door panel that light up at night are super cool. I didn't realize I ordered them. They are definitely worth the money.

The power button for the infotainment turns with the volume control ****. If you turn the volume up, it points to the right and if you turn it down, it points to the left. This is a weird bit of cost cutting that everyone has noticed the first time they sat in the car.

The transmission in D mode is downright dangerous when pulling into traffic at a stop sign. The second gear start with no boost is so much slower than the regular speed of the car, it is tough to judge how much room you need to pull out. If I cause an accident in this car, it will be in this situation.

When coasting at parking lot speeds and I give the car 5-10% throttle, there is a grinding noise that feels like a clutch rapidly engaging and disengaging. It felt like a dual clutch at low speeds. I was very confused when I found out the car has a traditional torque converter. I can't tell if it is a BMW tuning issue on the Aisin AWF8F35 or if they are all like that.

The first quarter inch of brake travel is too grabby. Once you get past that point, the brakes let up and become nicely progressive. My wife and I drive four cars regularly and there is an adjustment period in the mini when we trigger abs every time we want to slow down 5 mph.

The combination of second gear starts and the grabby brake makes parking lots with uphill parking spaces difficult. We live in Florida and the lots are sloped for drainage purposes. After three months, the parking procedure still consists of give it gas at 2 mph, nothing happens, grinding noise, nothing happens, suddenly going 7 mph, brush the brake with my pinky toe, slam passengers into the dash, trigger stop/start, and give up even though I am only half way into the parking space.

I have owned other cars with direct injection but I have never heard injectors this loud. It is the loudest mechanical noise in the cabin at full throttle. On the other hand, the exhaust is so quiet, it is tough to tell when the car reaches redline. I chose not to purchase the HUD when I bought the car. If I had known how quiet the exhaust would be, I would have added it to the car. I am on the lookout for an exhaust the preserves the two loudness modes and is significantly louder in loud mode.

Sport transmission mode with automatic mode feels perfect for street driving. You are always in boost. On the other hand, sport transmission plus sport mode on the car is weird. The revs just hang out at 4k or 5k after you get out of the throttle. We have tried this combination at autocross but the kickdown is annoying. At 4K rpms in 2nd gear, going to full throttle will kickdown to 5K rpms in 1st gear for a quarter of a second, then back to 2nd gear at 4200 rpms. You don't really speed up in the second or so it takes for the car to shift gears twice.

Tire rollover is a big problem. We are up to 40 psi on Falken Azenis 660rt tires and we still run on the sidewalls in the corners. After 20 runs on low grip asphalt, the wear triangles are completely gone on two of the tires. I am going to try 45 psi at the next event. If the fronts still roll over, I am going to start bring a full sized spare to autocrosses. I am not sure what to do when we go back to our high grip concrete sites later in the year. There are oem crash hubs that increase camber but I am not quite ready to spend $2000-3000 to have the dealer swap them for me for six autocrosses per year.

The high front tire pressures are not helping with understeer. I can't do any of the usual tricks to make the car oversteer. A rear sway bar is relatively cheap and should help but I need to fix my front tire rollover problem first. In the mean time, I might try some toe out.

Here is the autocross from last weekend. I threw away a bunch of time in the slalom. Some rotation on the long left turn out of the slalom and the right turn into the finish would have made the car more fun. I am curious how much time I would have saved with boost at the start line. I ended up 1.2 seconds back from the Focus RS's that won the class and finished in the top 10 in PAX.

 

Looks like so much fun i had a MINI F54 JCW at a MINI dealership autocross for the promotion. I came in first the time before and last time i came in second, closed early due to rain.

We cooked the runflat tires and the pavement was coming apart in a spot so it was a bit tricky. I could feel the difference in the weight of the F54 JCW compared to the F56 JCW and rotation. The JCWs at the event were both automatics which i was so used to a manual.

Tires and wheels really make the difference, next would be coilovers vs. the stock or DDS suspension. Brakes did good but i could feel a bit of fade after a while of heating them up.

I have autoX many times since about 2004 in MINIs of all sizes

 

For all of my complaining, the car is good fun. Once the boost comes on, it pulls hard. We are going to stick around in street class for a while because this is primarily a grocery getter. It is in a tough class with the Focus RS and the Civic Type R. If I can get the rear end to move around a little, I should be within shouting distance of the fast local drivers.