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Brand: Mini
Product: John Cooper Works Clubman All4
Release Date: On sale now
Price: $39,400 ($48,100 as tested)
From: miniusa.com
BMW, to the lament of some dealers, recently stopped selling the 3 Series wagon in America, but the Bavarian company hasn’t climbed out of the long roof game here entirely. There’s still a super-sporty, BMW-powered wagon on sale in the U.S. for 2020. Oddly enough, it’s the Mini Clubman — a car The Grand Tour‘s Jeremy Clarkson infamously called, in its first iteration, “about as desirable as a packet of dung or a can of worms.”
The current Mini Clubman John Cooper Works Edition, however, employs the same engine as the BMW X2 M35i — a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-pot that delivers 301 horsepower and 331 lb-ft of torque. That’s 13 more hp and 51 more lb-ft than the outgoing Volkswagen Golf R. The Clubman JCW zips from 0 to 60 mph in about 4.6 seconds, around a half-second quicker than the Honda Civic Type R. Sadly, it does lose the manual transmission offered with the previous edition, but the eight-speed automatic ain’t bad.
Sounds great, right? Well, there are two caveats. One: the Clubman JCW is expensive; my test vehicle punched in at $48,100, including a $7,000 “Iconic trim” package. Two: it’s also a Mini, with all that entails.
BMW created the Mini sub-brand in 2000. Like Volkswagen’s New Beetle, the original Mini Cooper rode in on a wave of nostalgia and adept go-kart handling. But after two decades, that nostalgia has faded. Americans, moreover, have largely stopped buying small cars. Mini, in turn has spent the better part of the past 10 years trying — and not quite succeeding — at translating its quirky style into the crossover realm. Still, sales dropped 17.4 percent in the U.S. in 2019. The Clubman, moving just 3,565 units, was Mini’s worst-selling model.
Mini’s power play with this BMW hot hatch engine is the brand’s latest attempt at a revival. If this performance gambit fails, there’s a chance it may be the last.
