During the past couple of years, the BMW-built Mini Cooper has become one of the most popular race cars in the 24 Hours of Lemons series. Why is that? Cheap parts, that’s why!
The crapcan road-race car-selection formula of fully depreciated + manual transmission + pretty quick + easy to find in junkyards was most applicable, ten or 15 years back, to something like a Civic/Integra, Neon or SN95 Mustang. I thought the Chevy Cobalt/ Pontiac G5 would take over for the 2020s, but the Mini Cooper now outnumbers those GM Death Watch mobiles about 20:1 in Lemons racing.
These cars are great fun on a race track, although reliability can be very BMW-ish (i.e., maddening electrical/computer glitches are commonplace).
In 2021, I decided I was going to put together a “Minipocalypse” article. I visited a few car graveyards in Colorado and California and shot so many doomed Minis that I gave up on the project due to Photograph Overload.
Back then, the ratio of crashed-to-uncrashed Minis in boneyards was about 1:1, but now nearly all of them are fairly solid cars that just weren’t worth enough to fix or rescue when something broke and/or when they got towed away for unpaid parking tickets.
And now genuine John Cooper Works hardware can be found at your local Ewe Pullet. I shot this Hoonigan-ized 2012 JCW, one of about 450 sold in the United States, a couple of months back.
Today’s car is a Checkmate, a 2006-only model for the Cooper S that included Space Blue Metallic paint, snazzy interior, special badges and a bunch of convenience and performance features (including a limited-slip differential).
There were plenty of such models for the ’06 Mini, including the One Seven and the Cooper Park Lane, plus the Salt, Pepper and Chili option packages. I think all of these may not have been available in the United States, but because automotive publications were then in a frenzy over the upcoming second-generation R56 Mini, there isn’t much written about the final-year R53 (though Jonny Lieberman did review it for this publication).
2006 was the final model year for the supercharged Cooper S, after which turbocharging took over.
The Checkmate Edition came with these cool two-tone seats.
There was also this leather-wrapped steering wheel.
There’s some nostalgia for the R53 Mini now, but this doesn’t seem to have helped resale values, a couple of decades after the last ones were built.
For 2006, the Cooper S came with either a six-speed Getrag manual transmission or a six-speed Aisin automatic. This car has the Getrag.
There was a John Cooper Works badge on the hatch, but the John Cooper Works GP had Recaro seats among other features and I assumed this was a phony badge.
In fact, this car really does have a John Cooper Works Tuning Kit. It doesn’t deliver quite as much power as the Very Nervous engine in the JCW GP (207 horses versus 218), but this would have been a quick machine.
The regular 2006 Cooper S engine was rated at just 168 horsepower.
This car now resides at a junkyard just south of Denver. I shot these photos last Tuesday and sent out an urgent Junkyard Heads-Up! alert at the time. The local Lemons Mini racers were quite excited about it, and perhaps they yanked all the factory-hot-rod hardware off this car that very day.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
2006 Mini Cooper S Checkmate in Colorado wrecking yard.
[Images: The Author]
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