Yeah, you get a stiffer set-up on the JCW. My two F56s were a fairly nice drive, but I have to say whenever I had an F56 Cooper as a courtesy car I always felt they drove excellently in comparison with that lighter front end and even more forgiving suspension. It seems like the 1.5 triple has power to spare under normal circumstances, but whenever you actually ask anything of it you realise it hasn’t really got anything left with immediate effect! Compared to how woeful R-series Coopers were relative to the S, the F56 one was a really usable car I felt.
Don’t judge me, but I have a 2021 lease Abarth 595 Esseesse presently which I got in the automotive desert of Autumn of that year. A dealer offered me a ridiculous amount to have my PCP Cooper S back but there was nothing else out there that was cheap for me to be up on the deal. Then I saw an advert for a batch of these pre-reg ones that they were giving away to such a degree that unexpected windfall I had on the MINI paid covered the first 28 months of the lease.
I never wanted an Abarth, got it blind so I wouldn’t be put off (as it was the only game in town) and to be fair it’s been far better than I expected. However, on balance it is a fairly awful car and if I had to daily it I’d push it off a cliff. The engine requires more work than the Cooper S did to get anything out of, but when you do it’s peachy and with its weight advantage and the turbo being a bit old school in its deployment, I actually think it would make a Cooper S feel a tad pedestrian.
I haven’t really got on with it though. Crazy as it’s one of the worst cars I’ve ever had stewardship of but so many people want to talk to me about it, sat there yelling “look at me” in its primer grey, white wheels with red calipers and big fat twin Akrapovic pipage. Had it not been immensely cheap, I would resent its very presence though.
No judgement here… before I bought my ND I drove a 695 Rivale. I liked it but the deal and timing weren’t quite right. I was still half looking at Abarths when I bought my Mini. I do think a hot or warm hatch and an MX-5 is a good combo if you’re lucky enough to be able to have both. They give completely different experiences.
Yeah, I was saying to someone the other day how a JCW and an MX-5 would ease the headache, but the absence of a double garage and a spare additional 20 large are an additional couple of problems! I think I can do an MX-5 on its own from a practicality perspective - the times it would have caused me problems over the last 4 years or so are few and far between.
I keep seeing odd bits of stuff online about rot underneath starting to show on early NDs. Is it a case of a few bad eggs as with anything or is there a bit of a trend?
You can’t magic up more seats, but fitted luggage is really handy to maximise the boot space and take the headache out of packing. You can also get boot racks.
They all rust. I’ve had mine treated. I was pretty shocked by the underneath of my MX-5 compared to a 2007 BMW Z4 Coupe that I had, given that the MX-5 was only four years old when I got it and 9 years newer than the BMW.
