Photos: Zerin Dube
We’re living in the golden age of the automobile right now. You can buy purpose-built enthusiast versions of just about every kind of vehicle these days, from sedans to pickup trucks to wagons, and they all do a pretty good job of putting a smile on the driver’s face when pushed hard.
There is another tier that sits above those vehicles, though. A tier where just the thought of driving these vehicles gets the serotonin flowing, and a great sense of happiness overwhelms you. These are vehicles like the Mazda Miata, Porsche 911 GT3, anything with a Hellcat engine, the Jeep Wrangler or Ford Raptor, and a handful of other no-compromise performance enthusiast vehicles. These vehicles are all over the spectrum as to what they are good at, but they all exist to do one thing – bring the driver maximum joy when being used as designed.
Here recently, I had the opportunity to spend a week with the 2021 MINI John Cooper Works (JCW) GP, and the same feeling of immediate joy overcomes me a month later whenever I think about driving it. There are many reasons I shouldn’t like the car on paper but put rubber to the road and all that goes out the window.
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