Forgive my novice or otherwise stupidity:
Was a JCW R50 ever produced?
Was there ever a first gen JCW automatic?
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There was a JCW exhaust and tune available for the R50, so... kinda.

 

I bookmarked this site, which might be helpful:

Guide to the John Cooper works Tuning and Sound Kits for the R50 generation of the Mini Cooper

 

Yes to both questions.

 

Thanks for the acknowledgment to my question.
The reason I asked: I met a woman this afternoon who drove a 2015 Mini. She commented : "I love your little Mini. My dad has one too. He said it is the John Cooper Works edition".
' showed me a picture she had taken (from a distance), of a what appeared to me (from my untrained eye), a nice looking PW "stock" R50. It's not that I didn't believe her...I just didn't know.

Thanks MCS4FUN. I did come across that site while searching (out of range) on my cel phone before you posted the link. Not enough bars to load the page until now trying again, on a PC.

Thanks again!

 

I would think it would be hard to find an R50 JCW but it would be pretty cool.

 

R50s with a JCW Tuning Kit are especially rare in the US since very few of these kits made it across the pond. The JCW Tuning Kit was for pre-facelift models.

The R50 JCW Tuning Kit included cool side scuttles ...

 

Whoa, I've never seen that scuttle. We had the JCW exhaust and tuning kit on our 2003 R50 because the aftermarket exhaust that was on the car when we bought it had started to rattle. I remember it coming with the exhaust, tune, and air intake, though the car already had a short ram air intake so they just handed us the air box.

I don't remember whether it had a different engine cover or not, but I remember it came with an authenticity certificate of some kind. Definitely didn't include new scuttles.

 

There was a brand new R50 JCW head and sound kit for sale here several years ago. I wanted to buy the head for my R53 but was never able to find out if it differed from the S JCW head or not. I figured there might be a good chance they were identical since the regular heads only really differ in the valve material, and using the same JCW head for both would probably simplify production and lower production costs.

There were auto JCW’s, but not in the US. I may, or may not, have the auto JCW tune on my car. I had it flashed at a MINI dealer, but have been wondering if they really had access to the auto JCW tune to load it, or if they just made a quick $150 for doing nothing.

 

The R50 JCW are very very rare, the Sound Kits were also very rare. They were both very expensive for the gains that they gave with the latter not making much of any extra power.

It's interesting that they got rid of the revised head but makes sense as the pre-facelift R50's had the Midlands/Rover 5 speed that couldn't really handle the power and torque that the stock motor put out. I will say, the NA W10 motor with a more open exhaust pipe and open intake makes a really good sound. I had a Megan Racing cat-back exhaust and aFe "cold air" intake on my R50 and it sounded amazing at full throttle. The video below has a mic under the hood by the battery box and showcases my **** driving. LOL

but yes, there are very few JCW R50's, true unicorns.

 

^^^ Interesting comment on limitations of pre-FL 5-speed gearboxes, considering JCG's spec-racer Clubsport kit outlined in the link below (same source as I posted yesterday). Nothing within kit components mentions or addresses the OEM gearbox, thus seems those might have been campaigned in unaltered configuration.
John Cooper Works Clubsport

Searching a bit further, I found these related links:
MINI Y Register: JCW Club Sport
RaceCarAds: 2002 R50 John Cooper Works Clubsport Mini Cooper #37
2009 NAM post #10: John Cooper Challenge cars