Following the Mille Miglia route, SilverBeast did a stopover in Modena
Category Archives: MINI
ClubBeast at Reims
Early morning shot of our MINI Cooper S Clubman soaking up the eerie atmosphere of the abandoned racetrack at Reims.
SilverBeast Gets Daytime Running Lights
We recently put Daytime Running Lights On PaceBeast and we were so pleased that we had to fit them to SilverBeast Our JCW Coupe.
Last weekend I picked up my Mum’s BMW 318iS Coupe so convoyed back with Peanut in the JCW. We kept swapping places on the long drive, first P leading as she had the sat nav and then me. And yes just like you find yourself looking at your car’s reflection in a shop window, I spent a lot of time admiring these lights in the rear view mirror of the JCW Coupe!
Bottom line we love them and the added road presence it gives the car. Roll on the next mod – auxiliary gauges!
PaceBeast Earns his GT Badge
We have had our MINI Cooper SD Paceman (PaceBeast) for just over a year now and what a year that has been for PaceBeast. In that time he has done no less than 5 European Road Trips. Rightly then this is a right of passage and he has really earned his GT Grand Tourer badge.
His first trip was to Le Mans for the 2014 Le Mans Classic where he performed faultlessly even in a monumentally evil thunderstorm one day as we returned from Le Mans to our hotel in Bagnoles.
Towards the end of July he was back in France this time for a longer trip to the South of France. 700 miles of motorway from Calais to St Tropez proved that he really is a comfortable motorway cruiser – a true GT. He also demonstrated a taste for the finer things in life as he per used the local vineyards in the South of France
His next foray abroad was to Paris in October of 2014 for the Motorshow where we got to admire the beautiful MINI Superleggera. Again he served well, handling the Paris traffic with aplomb, the semi command driving position proving quite a benefit.
After Paris he did a short European trip to Bruges at the end of November for the Christmas markets where again he served us well with his ample luggage space which came in useful for our Christmas shopping.
In 2015 our first European adventure was Venice in February but no accolades for PaceBeast there as we flew for that one. May however, saw a big drive to the South of France and as with the last trip to the south he did sterling service.
So there you go a worthy wearer of the GT badge.
PaceBeast Gets Daytime Running Lights
Fresh back from another successful European Trip to The South Of France and back we treated him to some new daytime running lights to give him a bit of presence on the road.
In honour of the number of European trips he has now completed we have awarded him Grand Tourer status and have therefore ordered him a GT badge. Another update then when his badge arrives.
Car Of The Week -AutoBeast Test Drives The F56 JCW
This morning we finally got around to taking a closer look at the new F56 John Cooper Works courtesy of Cotswolds Cheltenham. The car has been reviewed many times over on the net with generally favourable reviews, so I am not going to go down the same full on review. In those terms suffice to say, it is quick fun and very polished – we like it a lot. Here though is a bit of the detail that caught our eye.
The one I drove was automatic with chili pack and other extras giving it an on the road price of £34000. For this we got a Heads up display unit, which because of the driving assistance pack gave you three bits of information – your speed, the speed of the road you are on and a graphic rev counter, its position can be adjusted to suit your eye level and instantly I loved this – the information you needed just where you needed to see it.
The next thing I noticed were the seats. These are I believe the standard works seat, a mixture of fabric, alcantara and leather. They look fabulous and are instantly vey comfortable and very grippy. Yep sold on the seats.
The steering wheel felt good in the hand and looked very professional, it suited the whole car interior which looks premium and polished. Then there is the auto box. Well for me it was awesome. I loved it and would definitely have it in this version. First, the car is quicker as an auto than a manual. Secondly, autos are dull a sports car should be a stick? Well… Not really, you see with a stick you get to drive the car one way i.e by changing gear. With the auto however, you get options. Stick it into drive and let the car do the work. Fun and you tend not to look an arse. Alternatively put into a manual sport mode and change up and down yourself using the paddle shifters on the steering wheel. What a blooming hoot. Trust me it’s great fun. Thirdly the car has the fuel saving stop/start function. My wife, Mrs P still hates this on our Paceman and JCW but matched to this auto box, it is just so smooth and simple. You slow down by braking and come to a stop. The engine switches off, the lights go green you move your foot over to the accelerator and you just go. So so smooth. Spot the bit of red below seeming to stick out of the side of the inner part of the steering wheel. Well actually it is in the middle of the centre console flick switches. It is a shiny red start button. Yep a shiny red start button. Mum… It’s got a shiny red start button can I have one Mum can I?
It’s fast too and yet refined if that is how you want it to be. the ride is sporty when required but comfortable and refined (by MINI standards) if you need it to be. So put simply I was impressed. 
So… Am I getting one? No. Why not, well we love our JCW Coupé so we would want this as well as the Coupé, not instead of and to be honest we haven’t got a spare £34K this week, in fact nor next week either. But if I had, yep I’d have one of these in an instant.
For my money there are a number of very special MINI models. The First Generation GP is one and one I still hanker for badly, Don’t know about the second generation GP to be honest. The R58 MINI Coupé JCW is for my money another very special MINI and now I think this one is too. This one is probably the most accomplished all round JCW of the lot but car lovers have no rationality or logic, it’s all about the heart and the seat vibrations that stir the heart so a GP owner or a MINI Coupé JCW owner will probably be just as disgustingly happy with their cars.
Conclusion – make no mistake this car is a cracker all the way down to its crackling good exhaust.
Car Of The Week – MINI Paceman JCW For Sale
This car was bought new by some friends of ours and when I first saw it, which you can read about here, it inspired us to buy our Paceman – a red SD with a white roof – which we have loved from day one. Now this car has come up for sale and I have to say what a cracker it is – a low mileage JCW with one extremely careful owner for new. This Paceman needs a good, loving home!
Here are the specs:-
Key facts
- 2013
- Petrol
- Hatchback
- Manual
- 6500 miles
Media pack, Chili Pack, absolute black exterior, leather lounge championship black/red interior, anthracite roof lining, rain sensor with auto headlight, sport decal stripe, sun protect glass, heated seats, Xenon headlights, full bluetooth, DAB digital radio, sat nav with voice control, sport suspension, 18″ burnished black alloys, heated mirrors & washer jets, thatcham 1 alarm, sport button, seal & protect, parking sensors, 2 remote keys, full history with manual, 1 lady owner from new, immaculate condition throughout, must be seen, very low miles, in daily use will go up slightly but not being used much, viewings welcome. Priced to sell., BLACK, 4 seats, £19,800
Running costs
| Urban mpg | 30.1 mpg | CO2 emissions | 172 g/km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extra Urban mpg | 45.6 mpg | Annual Tax | £205 |
| Average mpg | 38.2 mpg |
Performance
| Engine power | 211 bhp | Engine size | 1598 cc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acceleration (0-60mph) | 6.9 seconds | Top speed | 140 mph |
| Wheel drive | Four Wheel Drive |
The car is currently for sale on AutoTrader I just wish I had the money!
And Sold in 1 day!
PaceBeast Gets New Shoes
When we bought PaceBeast we knew from the word go how we wanted it to look. basically our first MINI known as CooperBeast was clothed red and white with white alloys and white A-panels and we wanted to replicate him.
I think we are close now and it is in the detail that we have achieved this. We deliberately omitted tinted windows and intentionally kept the alloys at 18 inch rather than go 19 or 20 inch on rubber band tyres. This will jar to the eyes of the modernists who want the wheel to fill the arch and the vehicle to look slammed but remember that first it is a functioning and very useable four wheel drive and secondly, we are chasing a retro look and to do that we needed to keep the fatter tyres. A bonus for us is that it is a very comfortable cruiser – by far the most refined MINI we have ever owned. The alloys by the way our Team Dynamics Monza Type Rs and were supplied by wheelbasealloys.com who were fantastic to deal with delivering the alloys in record time. A JCW steering wheel is the only outstanding mod we have planned. Hope you like it.
PaceBeast – Looking Like One Of The Gang
Just needs the white alloys…
Car Events 2014 – Mega MINI Meet Lytham June
We had stayed overnight at my Mum’s in Buckley to be nearer to this event as it was a long way from home. We had gone to this last year and enjoyed the venue although the weather had not been too kind to us, and we were promised a fine day this time.
So an early start, although not quite as early as we had intended as my phone had run out of juice, the alarm had not gone off and we were still sleepy from our sunrise adventure the day before. But we were away by 7.30 and arrived at Lytham Hall at about 9.00am. We parked up on the Total Mini stand and soon met up with RVW and Storm who we hadn’t seen for ages. A brew and a bacon bap was in order so we made our way to the little café at the back of the Hall, and took time to catch up.
We were greeted by some Star Wars characters as we came out and and i was really impressed with the uniforms. The helmets had a built in voice changer which sounded really cool. I asked but Peanut said no to me getting an outfit. We then took some time to prowl around the trade stalls. Me and Mrs P were both drawn to The Speed Factory stand where there were some white alloys for sale at a very reasonable price. We wanted our new Paceman to have white wheels from new but they are no longer an option, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to fix this. Sadly he had none in the size we needed, so we shall have to search harder.
As we walked down the driveway of the Hall and admired the cars, we realised an old friend from our European MINI jaunts was coming towards us in his new coupé. It was Spaci from Switzerland who was visiting friends in Birmingham and thought he would drive up for the day and It was a lovely surprise to see him after such a long time. Storm, RVW, Spaci, Peanut and myself Beastmaster – all legends in the MINI community and we knew so few of the other people at the event!
After lunch we browsed a bit more and got chatting to some Paceman owners and the afternoon became very warm and sunny, so we had an ice cream and then a rest in our new padded chairs. A few more photos, this time Peanut’s thoughts turned to more artistic creations, although some of us took the whole thing more seriously than others, as you can see below!
We had a long journey home and so we bid farewell to Lytham Hall, said goodbye to the legends and with our MINI love satiated for the time being, set off on our way home, just noticing in the nick of time that we were about to drive off leaving our new chairs on the grass behind us! To have lost them only a day after buying them would have been a sad end to a lovely day. This is a lovely venue for a MINI Meet and we really hope it establishes itself as a regular feature on the MINI calendar.
AutoBeast 