Mini Countryman JCW - long-term review

Hairpin, we have a problem. I’m halfway up the Hardknott Pass and the Countryman has just experienced lift-off. No, I’ve not slipped the surly bonds of earth - swift though the JCW Countryman is, it’s no SLS - but I have managed to lift a wheel in the air, which entirely foxes the traction control temporarily.

You’d expect an SUV to be able to deal with a bit of slope angle and cross-axle testing, wouldn’t you? We’re not off-road after all. Actually I’ll come on to that. But then, like so many, this is an Suv rather than an sUv. I get out and have a look at it. Not much wheel travel is there? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more droop on a Porsche 911 - which, completely uncoincidentally, is the reason I’m here.

About ten years ago I bought a trio of track-focused cars up here, a 991-generation GT3 RS, a McLaren 675 LT and a Lambo Aventador SV, just to see if they could cope with what is undoubtedly Britain’s gnarliest road. They could. By which I mean they made it over, but the toll on undertrays and puckered sphincters made it something I didn’t wish to repeat.

This time I’m up here for something else I don’t wish to repeat. Not while I still have memory of it, at least. The day before I’d done the Fred Whitton Challenge, a bike ride renowned as the toughest in the UK, which, after 90 miles of toil and sweat decides that what you now need is the 1-in-3 inclines of the Hardknott and Wrynose passes.

I made it through that, so the following day folded my trembling legs into the Mini and went back to have another look. It is stunning up here, but the road is a goat track. It aspires to be a road, but suffers from delusions of grandeur. What was it with the Romans that here, at the edge of empire, they felt the need to mark their territory with a trail? Two millennia later it remains one of the most extreme sections of blacktop anywhere, the tarmac runkled up where it’s run down the road like treacle.

As a test of the Countryman there are positives though. The electric handbrake works terrifically well, for instance. And the chassis is clearly very stiff. It also holds gears well, allowing it to descend a lot less sketchily than I had the day before. Dear God, I thought the uphill was bad enough on the bike, but try dropping down slopes that steep while your saddle tries to punch your arse over the handlebars.

And it is commendably efficient. It had breezed up to Cumbria at 40.4mpg, come back at 39.3. This is now three months in a row that I’ve beaten the WLTP claimed economy figure. I feel guilty for not using the JCW as intended. I’ll rectify that. And its long distance road manners belie the exuberant styling and distracting cabin - the JCW is a surprisingly calm, quiet, settled cruiser. More of a grown up than I expected.

Of course it’s another opportunity to question the Mini’s size, because it fills the gap between dry stone walls every bit as effectively as a John Deere. But for the 99 per cent of my journey that wasn’t in remote bits of the Lake District I was much more enamoured of the Mini’s maxiness. The bike didn’t have to travel on the back, that was just for the pictures. On the way up it had travelled inside. As had the Thule towbar bike rack, a bike shop’s worth of tools and kit, and a whole suite of camping gear. I hadn’t even needed to take a wheel off. The Hardknott did that for me.