JCW Project: West Coast Customs and Universal City MINI Collab

Chris Marino of Century West BMW is becoming popular online for his creative projects on BMWs. He is in the perfect position to do more than just BMW projects because he is currently the General Sales Manager for Universal City MINI and Century West BMW. Check out this collab that he did with West Coast Customs.

Passion ultimately inspired Marino to start and complete this project on a JCW. “I had to do it on a Works Hardtop,” Marino says.

West Coast Customs and its CEO, Ryan Friedlinghaus, were very supportive of the project. “Ryan is a good friend of mine and unbeknownst to many, a great BMW enthusiast—someone who has a lot of respect for the BMW brand and someone who has been very guarded with any projects related to BMW & MINI as a whole.” Marino shares.

“When Chris approached me on the JCW design, I was really excited about it,” says Friedlinghaus. “I shared Chris’ desire to take an amazing hatch and make it less-understated while at the same time not take away from the unique style that is the MINI Cooper.”

The result of Marino & Friedlinghaus’ union may be “understated if understated is synonymous with “sick” and “viciously-cool”. With the design in mind, the West Coast Customs team went to work: custom matte-black wrap, shadowline exterior trim, gas cap, front grill and a subtle 35 percent window tint. Both Marino & Friedlinghaus, early-on, agreed to utilize MINI parts whenever possible so shadowline headlight & taillight trim pieces were sourced along with a gorgeous set of 19” JCW Style 526 wheels.

“The wheels were the only challenge,” Friedlinghaus says. The 526 style wheels belong to the Clubman’s suspension and geometry and, as a result, were only hub centric—a good start, but the decision was made to resolve the offset-issue by having CNC machined aluminum hub-centric spacers fabricated just for the Works-cars’ application.

“Not long ago BMW Motorsports would deliver cars with track-parts packed into the trunk—I rather liked that idea and in the same vein, I wanted to offer this JCW with two sets of wheels—its original equipment street wheels and something aggressive should you want to dress-up the car.”

“BMW and MINI build such fantastic products that to mechanically tune and modify them beyond appearance risks taking away from an extremely well-engineered factory-product,” Friedlinghaus says—taking special care to emphasize that he is protective of BMW & MINI engineering.

“Some manufacturers need a lot of performance help right off the showroom floor—BMW and MINI do not have this problem and their final products are better than most brands to begin with.”

Source: BMW Blog