Greetings to all. First, I wish the best to those of you who may have been affected by Irene.
I remember reading posts recently mentioning that Mini had supposedly "fixed" (for 2011) the tendency of previous MCS models to torque steer.
I am still getting used to my 2011 MCSm. I have noticed that most of the time, under full boost, the steering wheel stays pretty well on track. There have been some occasions, however, when there were noticeable tugs (some of which may have been due to irregularities in the road surface) in either direction- nothing dramatic - but somewhat distracting.
Yesterday I let her rip on a moderate left hand sweeper on very smooth road. There was quite a tug to the right. This one, I'm sure, raised my BP by a few points- not exactly a "white knuckle" experience but a little scary.
I was just wondering if any of you other 2011 MCS owners have had similar experiences. ( I still love this little beast ! )

Best rgards,
Mark

 

My 2011 JCW had a lot of torque steer. It was almost completely eliminated by installing a NM Engineering Engine Torque Arm Insert.

 

My 2009 MCS has it and so does my wife's. We don't care. it part of the Mini. You have to drive these cars you can't be a passenger in the drivers seat.

 

Torque steer - no issues. Barely perceptible a couple of times, but it just as easily could have been my imagination. I give five stars to the fix.

Bump steer (with the stock tires) - yikes. Any sizable imperfection in the road surface while hard in a turn ends up being an adventure...and quite scary sometimes. Based on the observation of others, I'm sure going to some decent, non-runflat performance tires would mitigate a lot of this.

 

The bump steer to me is a bigger issue than the torque steer. That can sometimes be a bugger. We switched to non run flats and it does help.

 

The MCS does have some torque steer but its not the worst I have driven. The Dodge SRT-4 would pull you into a ditch if you weren't careful, hehe.

Now the best FWD car I have driven that basticlly has not torque steer is the VW GTI. You can hound those and nothing, stable as a rock.

 

The R60 supposedly doesn't have much torque steer, and in my experience, that's true. However, when you mentioned bump steer, my ears perked up, because I'm experiencing really significant bump steer at high speeds. There's a large bridge near my house (the "Q" bridge from East Haven to New Haven on Rt. 95 in CT) and the steel seams in the pavement cause pretty significant bump steer, especially because the bridge curves pretty hard for part of it.

Sorry that I can't contribute any firsthand knowledge of torque steer in the 2011 hardtop, but I was curious about the bump steer issue.

 

I think you'd be mentioning many more experiences if you had a pre-2011 MINI. The torque steer may not be gone 100% for all situations but it was much more pronounced pre-2011.

 

Thanks for the input from all of you so far. Since I have no experience driving any previous years of the MCS, I really did not have a baseline to compare the degree of torque steer (or what I perceive to be TS). RKW, your reply pretty much sums up
what I had suspected.

Best regards,
Mark

 

The first time I experienced real torque steer was in my friend Mazdaspeed 3. It did surprise me a bit, but now after owning 2 fwd and 2 awd (Evos have it to) cars, I've grown to like it. It makes me feel like I'm Lewis Hamilton rounding the last corner in a rainy Brazil to take my world championship. I didn't think the MCS had much at all and it's the nature of the beast, more power, more torque steer. Either except it or get something with less power to weight and move on.

Cheers
Josh

 

Look, Mini didn't redesign the front drivetrain, so the only things they could do to reduce torque steer is to use the brakes or reduce engine power...

 

You are completely correct, of course, but you make it sound so perfunctory.

It's actually a pretty clever addition to the DSC/DTC/ELDC/EBD/CBC alphabet soup of electronic maneuvering controls. The purists tend to dislike, but IMHO it works fairly well.

 

I once drove a Shelby Omni, I rented it from Hertz... That thing was crazy with torque steer. You didn't know where it was going... Hilarious. Even my then young wife thought it was fun... Gotta love early modern turbo cars..