Mini is caught in a conundrum and might as well throw a party.
The brand known for joyful little cars with go-kart handling has long been a refuge of stick shift lovers. People who love to feel fine mechanical control of the driving experience often find themselves drawn to the quick reflexes of a tiny car and the palpable control a manual transmission gives its driver.
But Mini is going electric. Parent company BMW plans to take the brand all-battery-powered by the decade’s end. Electric cars don’t have transmissions at all — their motors attach directly to the axles of cars. There’s no need for a complex system to convert the engine’s spin to axle spin.
So, unless Mini goes the way of Toyota and decides to hack together an electric manual, Mini fans have to say goodbye to the third pedal.
Goodbye can be a celebration.
Not the Last Stick-Equipped Mini
The 2024 Mini John Cooper Works 1TO6 Edition doesn’t mean goodbye for the manual-equipped Mini. It’s just a statement of love for the stick.
Mini says the model is “the purest form of driving fun with a manual transmission in a car.” It comes only in a 2-door hardtop. Like all JCW models, it uses a 228-horsepower 2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine. Like the name suggests, it mates it to a 6-speed stick.
The 1TO6 Edition starts at $45,300, plus $995 for destination and handling.
Look Closer at That Stripe
It wears a dark color scheme for a Mini. Midnight Black body and Piano Black accents keep the look uniform, drawing the eye to the gray bonnet stripe. There, you find the tribute — the stripe consists of thousands of iterations of the stick shift pattern found on the shifter. The pattern is painted on the tailgate like a badge, too.
Inside, the theme is black and gray with red accents in the lighting and stitching. Badges placed around the cabin read “One of 999,” telling you just how many stick tributes Mini plans to build.
As far as we know, this is nowhere near the last stick-equipped Mini. But it suggests that goodbye is on the minds of Mini designers as they prepare for the electric future. Next year’s Mini Countryman will be the first Mini built on an all-new electric platform likely to power the Cooper itself eventually.
