The British automaker has recently introduced the all-new Mini John Cooper Works Rally, the model that might be willing to take the Dakar crown away from France’s Peugeot.Mini dominated for four years the Dakar rally – but lost in January this year to Peugeot. Now the company is back with a vengeance, because alongside its partner X-Raid has developed an all-new rally raid machine – the Mini John Cooper Works Rally.
As we can clearly see, it shares some traits with the second generation, equally all-new Mini Countryman, which just premiered in front of the public in the United States during the Los Angeles Auto Show.
This is because the former has an aerospace-grade, tubular steel chassis packing up front a 3.0-liter, twin-turbo BMW diesel engine, delivering 340 horsepower (254 kilowatts) and 590 pound-feet (800 Newton meters) of torque – as per the regulation’s 38 millimeter (1.5 inch) restrictor plate. Then the power is sent through a six-speed sequential transmission to the all-wheel drive.
The latter is a bit surprising – Peugeot managed to win with 2WD and now Toyota is following them for 2017, as the two-wheel drive cars are allowed by the regulation to be lighter, more powerful and with bigger suspension travel.