If you think Dakar is just a long rally, think again. This is the Mount Everest of motorsport, a two-week torture test where machines and humans alike either emerge victorious or crumble into dust. Mini had already made a name for itself in the event with the Mini All4 Racing, which dominated Dakar between 2012 and 2015. But by 2017, the game had changed. Competitors like Peugeot had turned up with monstrous rear-wheel-drive buggies, and Mini needed something new to keep up. Enter the John Cooper Works Rally, a machine designed to take the fight to the best.
Let’s talk about the 2017 Mini John Cooper Works Rally, a machine that doesn’t just wear the JCW badge for show—it earned it by devouring the planet’s most punishing rally stages. Built by the German X-raid team, this wasn’t just a Mini with a lift kit. No, this was a full-blown Dakar weapon, engineered to charge through endless deserts, obliterate rock fields, and come out the other side looking like it had just taken a casual Sunday drive.
If you think Dakar is just a long rally, think again. This is the Mount Everest of motorsport, a two-week torture test where machines and humans alike either emerge victorious or crumble into dust. Mini had already made a name for itself in the event with the Mini All4 Racing, which dominated Dakar between 2012 and 2015. But by 2017, the game had changed. Competitors like Peugeot had turned up with monstrous rear-wheel-drive buggies, and Mini needed something new to keep up. Enter the John Cooper Works Rally, a machine designed to take the fight to the best.
Despite the Mini badge, there was nothing "mini" about this car. Underneath the toughened-up Mini Countryman silhouette sat a 3.0-liter B57 inline-six turbo diesel, producing 340 horsepower and a ridiculous 800 Nm of torque. This was routed through a six-speed SADEV sequential gearbox, giving the car the kind of relentless power delivery you need when charging up a 200-meter-high sand dune. The body? A mix of carbon fiber and Kevlar, because when you’re smashing through the Sahara at 180 km/h, a little bit of bulletproofing doesn’t hurt.
Its longer wheelbase (2,900 mm) and wider track were designed for maximum stability, while a 50mm increase in ride height allowed it to float over the toughest terrain. And just to keep things from getting too comfortable, it came equipped with Reiger Racing suspension, offering eight-way adjustable dampers, because in Dakar, you don’t just hit potholes—you hit craters.
Mini entered three John Cooper Works Rally cars in the 2017 Dakar Rally, with experienced drivers like Orlando Terranova, Mikko Hirvonen, and Yazeed Al-Rajhi behind the wheel. The competition was brutal, with Peugeot’s 3008 DKR buggy leading the charge. Mini wasn’t able to reclaim its previous dominance, but Terranova and co-driver Andreas Schulz still managed to secure a 6th-place overall finish—an impressive feat against the increasingly aggressive two-wheel-drive competition.
Though it didn’t win Dakar outright, the Mini JCW Rally cemented its place in cross-country rallying history. It laid the groundwork for the Mini JCW Buggy, a rear-wheel-drive beast that would take the fight back to the buggies dominating the scene. And while you won’t see one of these parked outside your local supermarket, rest assured—somewhere, out in the desert, one of these machines is still carving up the dunes.
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Sir Edmund Hillary
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New Zealand mountaineer and explorer
