John Cooper Works is a company founded in the year 2000 by John Cooper

John Cooper (car maker)

John Newton Cooper was a co-founder, with his father Charles Cooper, of the Cooper Car Company. Born in Surbiton, Surrey, England, UK he became an auto racing legend with his rear-engined chassis design that would eventually change the face of the sport at its highest levels, from Formula One to...

, the racing car maker and tuner responsible for the Mini Cooper. JCW produces tuning parts and accessories for BMW's new MINI

Mini

The Mini is a small car that was made by the British Motor Corporation and its successors from 1959 until 2000. The original is considered a British icon of the 1960s, and its space-saving front-wheel-drive layout influenced a generation of car-makers...

.

When John Cooper died shortly after creating JCW, management passed to his son Michael Cooper. BMW

BMW

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...

 Group considered JCW to be "strong enough to be developed as a good sub-brand" and bought out the company in January 2007. Michael Cooper continues to work with JCW as a consultant.

Cooper

The first ever JCW kit was a 126 bhp upgrade for the MINI Cooper. The kit consisted of the following components:

- Flowed and ported Cylinder Head

- Air Filter

- Cover Injection Tube

- Uprated exhaust (cat-back)

- ECU remap

- Decorative Emblems

Despite its price tag of over €2000, this kit only offered a power increase of 11 bhp, a sportier exhaust note and a crisper throttle response. The main advantage was that these improvements, though fairly minor, could be made to the MINI Cooper without jeopardizing the factory warranty. In 2004, JCW discontinued the Cooper kit and introduced a Sound Kit for the Cooper. The Sound Kit consisted of a unique air intake system, cat-back exhaust and an ECU remap.

Cooper S

The first JCW Tuning Kit to be made available for the Cooper S was a 200 bhp upgrade for the Cooper S. Released in 2003, the kit consisted of the following components:

- Uprated cylinder head, gas-flowed and ported

- Uprated supercharger, faster-spinning

- Uprated air intake system and air filter

- Uprated spark plugs

- Uprated exhaust system

- Remapped ECU

ECU

ECU may refer to:Automotive terms* Electronic control unit, a generic term for any embedded system that controls one or more of the electrical systems or subsystems in a motor vehicle...

- Decorative badges, individually-numbered engine plate and certificate signed by Mike Cooper

At the time, the kit could not be factory-ordered, but had to be retrofitted at a MINI dealer, but from late 2005 the Cooper S could be ordered with the upgrade straight from factory.

In 2005, an additional upgrade was launched that increased power even more, to 210 bhp, by installing uprated injectors and again remapping the ECU.

A "JCW Sound Kit" was made available at the same time, consisting of the cat-back exhaust and the air filter, giving a sportier exhaust note and a 3 bhp power increase for around €1100.

Cooper S R56

In 2007, MINI released the JCW tuning kit for the new "R56" version of the car. This new version now being turbocharged as opposed to supercharged, the kit itself is very different from that of the previous Cooper S. Consisting of an uprated induction system, exhaust and ECU remap, this kit ups power 17 bhp to 192 bhp. Torque is up 10 nm to 250 nm (270 nm with overboost). Acceleration from 0-100 km/h is now 6.8 seconds, and a top speed of 232 km/h is now possible. Amongst MINI owners and fanatics, this kit is commonly referred to as the "Stage 1 Kit", although this nomenclature has never been officially employed by JCW or by BMW.

According to Mike Cooper, a MINI fitted with this kit will be "the fastest MINI ever produced" above all due to the extra torque and in-gear acceleration, which in certain driving situations will be even faster than the 218 bhp MINI JCW GP.

In mid-2008, MINI brought out a new addition to the JCW family - the MINI John Cooper Works. This is in fact not another power kit, but a whole new version of the R56 MINI, model code MF91 (MM91 in the Clubman version). This new version - unofficially termed "Stage 2" by some MINI fanatics - comes with three major differences compared to the 192 bhp power kit:

• Maximum power of 155kW (211 bhp) at 6000 rpm, and 260 Nm of torque (280 with overboost. This is achieved by means of a new, uprated turbocharger, larger-bore exhaust and a sportier ECU map. 0-100 km/h time is down to 6.5 seconds (6.8 in the case of the Clubman). Fuel consumption and emissions are also up, however, compared to the 192 bhp kit which has no change compared to the standard 175 bhp Cooper S.

• Electronic limited slip differential
  Limited slip differential
  A limited slip differential is a type of differential gear arrangement that allows for some difference in angular velocity of the output shafts, but imposes a mechanical bound on the disparity...
  
  (EDLC - Electronic Differential Lock Control). This is infinitely variable between 0% and 50%, as opposed to the permanent 30% of the optional LSD fitted to the R56 MINI Cooper S.

• DTC (Dynamic Traction Control) as fitted as standard on all BMW models nowadays. The MINI John Cooper Works is the first variant of the new MINI to come with DTC which, to date, is not available even as an option on other variants. The main difference between DTC and the extant DSC is the ability to "remap" the parameters for the traction and stability control systems, to allow a sportier drive while still employing these systems at the last minute, without fully deactivating them.