The largest Mini of them all, the Countryman crossover, will soon accept a new member into its family as the BMW Group owned British automaker will debut the John Cooper Works (JCW for short) model at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show.
The new JCW Countryman is fitted with Mini’s all-wheel-drive system known as ALL4 as standard with power coming from the latest iteration of the firm’s 1.6-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine featuring a twin-scroll turbocharger, direct injection and a variable valve control system.
In European specification, the turbo’d unit is rated at 215bhp (218PS) and 280Nm (207 lb-ft) of peak torque or 300Nm (221 lb-ft) with the overboost function.
With the standard six speed manual gearbox, it completes the 0 to 100km/h (62mph) sprint in 7.0 seconds and tops out at 225km/h (140mph). When equipped with the optionally available six-speed automatic, which is a first for a JCW model, the Countryman hits 100km/h in 7.0 seconds and stops accelerating at 223km/h (139mph).
The North American specification model is said to deliver 211bhp but the same peak torque. Oddly, MINI claims that the manual and automatic versions of the U.S. market JCW Countryman accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in 7.1 and 7.5 seconds respectively on their way to a top speed of 127 mph.
As you can see for yourselves, there’s a discrepancy between the performance numbers of the North American and European variants, which we’ll have to wait for Mini to solve.
Whilst U.S. fuel economy figures are not yet available, Mini revealed that the European model returns an average fuel consumption of 7.2lt/100km (32.7mpg US or 39.2mpg UK) with the manual gearbox and 8.0lt/100 km (29.34mpg US or 35.3mpg UK) with the automatic transmission.
Like any other JCW model, the Countryman benefits from a sports tuned suspension that reduces the height in this case by 10mm, a more aggressive exhaust system, an aero kit and larger alloy wheels (18-inches).
It also gets a standard Sport Button that tweaks the engine response and sound, and adjusts the power assistance provided by the steering.
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