This will not be the winner of this here vote for the Scariest Car.
The obvious answer is the Renault 5 Turbo but admitting that goes against every bone in my body, despite a gearchange that seemingly gravitates towards reverse and tries everything to land on it. Unprotected, facing the dogleg first, the thought of changing up or down into reverse instead of second is terrifying enough to keep you up at night, even years later.
It also has so little useable low-down torque that high revs have to be maintained if you are to maintain meaningful progress, leaving you at the mercy of Renault’s early experimentation with turbocharging. To master it, you quickly learn, more likely makes a fool of us mere mortals.
Instead, this case is being made for/against the MINI Cooper Works GP3. Similar, ish, enough to be the MINI’s equivalent: it’s a turbocharged two-seat hatch with more power than is good for it. It also looks scary, with its wings and those carbon plates all over the exterior, and there's a reason the press shots major on that menacing sky (top).
In today’s multi-hundred horsepower world, 300bhp is nothing out of the ordinary. But most cars that have similar power figures and more are over-engineered to the point that it is rare that you notice the power on any given drive. There is so much tech beneath you that there is a constant safety net, and there is usually so much performance left in reserve that it is more a marketing exercise. And generally, the car is better than you are.
But not the GP3.
Front-wheel drive, front engined, it’s only ever going one way: nose first into the nearest hedge. It is a very, very busy experience from the bucket seat. Even if this experience was only brief.
My experience with one on road test was when the world was still in and out of lockdowns. Many people had a lot of time to read magazines, but there was not a lot of opportunity to write new things for them.
In one gap a GP3 was delivered, but drives were still not easy to go for, or much use around east London. Garden centres were open, though, and, being east London, the drive to collect some compost was usefully long. And quiet, when aiming for opening time.
That quietness afforded that rare opportunity of going from a 30mph zone to a national speed limit road, with wide open space in front. This being a B-road, it wasn’t billiard-table perfect, but perfect for revealing its shortcomings. Steering wheel pointing straight into the straight Tarmac ahead, accelerator pressed, the torque quickly overpowered the capabilities of what was delivering it and the nose dived left. The corrections required required to be constant.
I'm not sure I've driven a new car that needed quite so much concentration, and one that would so quickly punish any lapse. And this is 'only' 300bhp, and a MINI.
I'm glad it exists, though. It feels like a skunkworks special that wasn't supposed to make production, or at least until that busy drive was turned into an engagingly busy one.
It will remain the most powerful front-wheel-drive combustion MINI, but how many remain out of hedges long enough to be classics in the future remains to be seen.
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