The outgoing GP had huge shoes to fill when it arrived in 2020 - does it do a better job when bought secondhand?
Very little goes wrong, prices remain firm
A stronger crank, new pistons and conrods and more cooling were specified to assure mechanical integrity under strain. The manual gearbox options available to buyers of other hot Minis were taken off the table for the gen-three GP, which could only be had with a torque converter 8-speed auto. Special cars, special prices – but what was the F56 GP actually like when you got into it and gave it laldy? And, following on from that, how much sense would it make to become the buyer of a used one in 2024? Let’s mull that one over. Note for reference: car weight and power data is hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong.
Maybe this gearbox had to be not only chosen, but softened up still further for the front-wheel drive GP. As it was, even with the dynamic stability control and the LSD working overtime the GP’s front tyres struggled to put power down smoothly. Still, they managed to put enough of it down to give the car a 5.2-second 0-62mph time, which was not to be sniffed at in a front-driver. Like for like, it was 0.9 seconds quicker than the auto version of the 230hp JCW.
Front suspension control arms wear out on ordinary Minis, let alone 300hp+ ones with a stiff setup, so don’t be surprised to hear some knocking from the front of your GP after a time spent on British roads. Up front, there was a deeper front bumper with a redesigned splitter and bigger vents. The wheelarch spats that stood proud of the wings were made from carbon fibre offcuts from the BMW i3 and i8 and bore the car’s build number from the GP’s 3,000-strong line.
You can’t do that in new Minis, whose interiors have always veered more towards form, albeit with the adaptation of original Mini features like the big central speedo and the bank of toggle switches. Directly ahead of the GP driver was the same slightly afterthoughtish freestanding digital cluster display shaped like a flu capsule that was also found in the JCW.
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