WHAT'S COMING UP?

Avenue of the Giants Weekend Run - Sat. March 23, 2024

Saturday will be a very full day of cruising from Novato up through the Avenue of the Giants and ending at Eel River Brewing in Fortuna. Sun...

Washington Post Calls JCW Coupe "A MINI Built For The Track"

Warren Brown, hurts in his euphoria for the car.  he writes,  in part, in his article in The Washington Post:
Similarly, you can smile for miles driving the Cooper Works Coupe until you hit a stretch of road that is the legacy of a Republican-vs.-Democrat spat over infrastructure. In a car with an especially short wheelbase — the centerline distance between front and rear wheels, which is 97.1 inches in the Cooper Works Coupe — it is a terribly jarring experience.

That is a real problem in a car expressly designed for the smoothness of speedways and other top-grade racing venues. Real-world roads, especially in the Washington-to-Boston corridor, tend to be poorly maintained or crippled by long-needed repair.

In cars with longer wheelbases and more compliant suspension systems, those highway bumps and potholes are absorbed and further ameliorated by the cushiness of the automobiles’ interiors. But there is nothing cushy about the sports-oriented cabin of the Cooper Works Coupe. And the car’s short wheelbase and track-oriented suspension system turn highway faults into torture.

At the end of a long run in this week’s subject car, I was hurting. I was not built for that kind of abuse, nor was the Cooper Works Coupe. It is what happens when infatuation and fantasy are trumped by reality, a beating made worse by discovery of the obvious — that there is little space for anything in the Cooper Works Coupe, except a seat for one complaining passenger.