This Is Why The New MINI John Cooper Works GP Is Not Offered in Manual

The new MINI John Cooper Works GP is quite the little monster and continues the GP tradition with a big rear wing, no rear seats, four-spoke wheels and a few other aggressive design cues.

It has a lot more power than the previous models but to the hardcore MINI enthusiasts and collectors, the smooth, quick-shifting automatic transmission gearbox aspect is a hard pill to swallow.

So why did they not offer the GP with a good old stick shift like the previous generations? Simply put, they [MINI and BMW] don’t have a manual transmission available that would be strong enough to handle the 225 kW from the 2.0-litre turbo engine.

This is the same engine used in the JCW Countryman and Clubman and a number of BMW’s so they obviously didn’t feel it was worth it to develop a stronger gearbox for a run of just 3,000 cars.

On a side note, people were wondering why the Nürburgring lap time disappeared from the dashboard. The 3D-printed dashboard remains, but it will now have each model’s production number instead (the display car uses 2020 as an example – see below).

Apparently this is because past customers cared more about which number car they had, rather than a lap time.