LITTLE BIG CAR; DOES SIZE MATTER? NOT WITH THIS MINI.(NEWS)(John Cooper Works Ltd.)

Byline: NATALIE NEFF

We worked the car into a giddy rhythm, rowing through the gears, dancing on the pedals and flicking the steering wheel in an almost choreographed sequence, the cadence dictated by the hairpins that wiggle their way along the Tramuntana mountains that cling to the western coastline of Majorca.

If it sounds like paradise, be assured, it was, and not just for the sunshine and the ocean and the general Mediterranean ambience. The 2009 Mini John Cooper Works, like every single model of Mini before it, loves a good turn. String a thousand of them together, and the Mini JCW simply giggles in your hands.

It's not even a matter of more power, though the JCW boasts more than any Mini short of a race-prepped model. Equipped as it is straight from the factory (rather than a dealer-installed kit like the previous JCW), it draws its breath through the same 1.6-liter inline-four as found in the Cooper S, with its direct gasoline injection and twin-scroll turbocharger, only with revisions and more boost for an additional 36 hp and 20 lb-ft of torque. Mini says the changes help propel the car to 62 mph from a standstill in 6.5 seconds, compared with the Cooper S's 6.7 seconds to 60 mph, but it will still deliver 33 mpg on the highway (the Cooper S does 34 mpg).

The six-speed manual gets a reworking, too, mostly to accommodate the extra output, and it remains as easy to work as ever. And in keeping with its sporting intentions, the Mini JCW is not available with an automatic transmission.

No, the magic that makes the JCW so much fun happens when you package all of that into a 97-inch wheelbase, give it an extra-peppy steering response, dress it up with a set of handsome but functional lightweight wheels and inject it with a dose of BMW electronic safety know-how.

Many enthusiasts will sneer at the mention of active safety features, only grudgingly acknowledging that they can benefit even the most skilled drivers. In the case of the Mini John Cooper Works, the standard dynamic stability control (DSC) system does a good job of erasing any major driver gaffes by keeping the wheels pointed in their intended direction. But like most systems of its ilk, DSC rears its head far too often to wring much fun out of the JCW, drawing down power at the smallest hint of wheel spin or yaw, even when intentionally inducedat which point those enthusiasts, understandably, will balk. Pushing a button to activate the dynamic traction control (DTC) system significantly raises the thresholds at which intervention occurs, and for spirited mountain drives, DTC, in its first front-drive application, remains fairly unobtrusive, even allowing for a bit of tail-out fun. But for those who really like to hang it outand the roads on Majorca begged for itDSC can be shut off completely.