When engineering the 2015 John Cooper Works, the most powerful production model in its history, Mini started somewhat paradoxically, with the brakes. And indeed, the brakes are utterly fabulous. Red-painted Brembo front calipers are so large that the wheel offsets needed to be increased. (Consequently, fairings on the fender arches were also added.) When called upon, the binders bring the JCW to a halt with sensational feel and without the touchiness of the previous model’s way-too-eager brakes. This here is good stopping, folks: confident, stable, and fade-resistant, all the better to bring the JCW down from its 153-mph top speed, should it ever find itself going that fast.

Happily, this sort of refinement is not limited to the car’s brakes and now characterizes most every dynamic aspect of the 2015 JCW. After the unruly first-generation JCW and a good-but-not-great follow-up model, the JCW is finally a well-balanced performance car. Festooned with aero pieces and a lightly sportified interior, the new JCW will not blow one’s mind in any particular respect (other than price, which we’ll discuss later) but neither does this JCW suffer from the conspicuous dynamic shortcomings that marred its predecessors. Even torque steer has been mostly quashed—no small feat for a car with 236 lb-ft of torque and barely eight feet of wheelbase. The JCW is finally comfortable in its tarted-up skin.

View Photos STEVE SILER

So Long, Saab

Our first drive of the new JCW—which arrives as a late 2015 model—took place on the twisty rural roads between New Haven, Connecticut, and the privately owned Wilzig Racing Manor in West Taghkanic, New York, and the JCW’s newfound confidence was fully on display in every setting. A goosed version of the Cooper S’s turbocharged 2.0-liter four-banger with an impressive 228 horsepower hurls the JCW forward from a stop and keeps the power flowing up to about 5500 rpm (at which point, however, it drops off precipitously). Midrange pull is likewise outstanding, making passing tractors and slow-moving Saab station wagons—oft-encountered rolling roadblocks in this part of the country—a matter of flexing your right foot. And it sounds sweet, too, thanks to a low-back-pressure exhaust system with a larger-diameter intermediate pipe and unique internal geometry. An accessory exhaust system activated by a Bluetooth remote controller—that, oddly, attaches to your keychain—dials up the noise even further, to Fiat 500 Abarth–like boisterousness.

The JCW’s available six-speed automatic features Sport shift mapping and allows manual takeover with the steering-wheel paddles. As with most BMW Group automatics, it yields slightly quicker acceleration than its manual counterpart, shaving two tenths from the zero-to-60-mph acceleration time (5.9 seconds versus 6.1, per the factory). It features an addictive crackle on overrun and delivers delightful, rev-matched downshifts when the brake pedal is tapped. More in character with the JCW, of course, is the standard six-speed manual, which is blessed with a light, progressive clutch and, for the first time, automatic rev-matching during downshifts, à la Chevrolet Corvette, BMW M3, and Nissan 370Z. While we pretty much default to stick shifts wherever they’re offered, we really wanted this manual to be better than it is. Shift action is merely okay, and the gates can be tough to find under pressure—say, when entering one of the blind corners of the Wilzig track.

Our time on the Wilzig course and a nearby autocross showed us that while the standard Sport suspension’s grip levels are generally high, the JCW will indeed still slide, usually nose-first. Fortunately, this seldom happens by surprise, as the chassis is in constant communication with the driver when equipped with the Dynamic Damper Control system, as were our test cars. This, we feel, is a particularly worthwhile $500 expenditure, adding a huge dose of tactility both through the chassis and the steering wheel when the toggle just at the base of the gearshift is nudged into Sport. On non-DCC-equipped cars, that action merely adds weight to the steering, sharpens the throttle response, and makes the exhaust noises blare a bit louder through the audio system’s speakers. Toggling to the right activates “Green” mode, which lightens the steering, retards throttle input, and lowers shift points, bringing the fun factor to somewhere marginally lower than a Cooper S. This is unlikely to be activated by very many JCW owners.

View Photos STEVE SILER

Poise, It Is Good

All that said, the JCW seemed happiest on the scenic, curving two-lanes that join one quaint Connecticut and New York town to another. A firm but well-mannered ride and unwavering on-center stability let us reach for high speeds on the long straights while the aforementioned brakes effortlessly scrubbed off speed as we set up for tight corners. The twitchiness of the prior JCWs has been all but eradicated, replaced by predictability and poise.

Indeed, the JCW gets closer than ever to the sublime, ready-for-anything nature of the larger and less powerful but generally flawless VW GTI, although with its starting price of a rather dear $31,450, the JCW is nearly $6K more than the base GTI. Load it up to the level of our test cars, whose bottom-line totals ranged from $37,850 to $41,800—that’s Golf R/Audi S3 money!—and the JCW starts to look and feel rather too cute to be taken seriously, no matter how refined and improved it may be. Keep it simple (cloth seats, manual transmission) and one can really make the case for one of these. But if you want all the goodies, you had better really love Minis.

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