Member Spotlight: Steve's 2025 Mini Cooper S "STOCKish Mini"

Most autocross cars are built around the driver. Steve Shelton built this one around the passenger seat.

Steve's car, which he calls the STOCKish Mini, is one of the Feature Ready builds in The Garage at AutoShowList, the tier reserved for the most complete member profiles on the platform. The full build profile for the STOCKish Mini has the specs, a 7-photo gallery and the trophy case. Here's the story behind them.

Built for the Navigator's Seat

Steve puts the reason plainly: "We have a special needs son that is unable to drive, but is an absolute adrenaline junkie and loves cars and everything fast and loud." So he built a 2025 F66 Mini Cooper S to take him racing.

"We transfer him from his wheelchair into the passenger seat and he becomes my navigator and right hand man."

Why a Mini, and Why Autocross

The choice of discipline was deliberate. "I've always loved how nimble the Minis are," Steve says, "and racing in autocross is extremely aggressive and thrill seeking as a driver and a passenger without the higher risks of him getting injured in high speed, door to door racing."

That is an accurate read of the format. Autocross runs one car on course at a time, through a cone layout on a large flat surface, with runs measured in seconds and speeds far below what a road course or a drag strip asks for. The steering input is constant and the car is near its limit almost the whole lap, so it feels enormous from inside while staying about as controlled as motorsport gets.

A Stock Turbo at 22 to 33 PSI

The 2.0-liter turbo four is still the factory turbo, running between 22 and 33 psi on 93 octane with an E40 blend. Feeding it: a Forge Motorsport induction pipe, a Ram Air cold air intake, a Forge Motorsport blow-off valve and a Burger Motorsports JB4 piggyback tuner.

Steve has not published a current dyno figure, so we are not going to invent one. The target he has published is further down.

For a baseline: the F66 Cooper S leaves the factory with BMW's B48 2.0-liter four, rated at 201 horsepower and 221 lb-ft, driving through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. Mini dropped the manual for this generation, which matters more than it sounds for a car with a passenger who is part of the drive: there is no third pedal to work around, and the left hand stays free.

The JB4 is a piggyback rather than a flashed ECU tune. It sits between the factory sensors and the stock engine computer and alters the signals the ECU acts on, which is why it can be moved between cars and pulled out without leaving a trace in the factory software. On a car still under warranty with a stock turbo, that reversibility is the point.

The fuel is listed as 93 octane with an E40 blend, meaning roughly 40 percent ethanol. Ethanol carries far more latent heat than gasoline, so it cools the charge as it evaporates in the intake and resists knock well above what 93 pump gas alone supports. That is what lets a factory turbo see the top of a 22 to 33 psi window without detonating.

Coilovers, Camber Plates and a Competition Tire

The chassis is where an autocross car is actually won. This one runs ECS coilovers with front camber plates and Forge Motorsport adjustable rear control arms, on Team Dynamics Pro Race LT wheels wrapped in Bridgestone Potenza RE-71RZ in 225. The RE-71RZ is a well-known extreme-performance tire on the autocross grid, chosen for peak grip across a short run rather than tread life. Exhaust is a 3-inch Milltek catback.

The camber plates are the piece doing the least obvious and most important work. A front-drive car on a tight cone course spends its life leaning on the outside front tire, and as the body rolls, that tire rolls onto its outer shoulder and loses contact patch exactly when it is being asked for everything. Dialing in negative camber at the top of the strut means the tire arrives flat on the ground at full lean instead of up on its edge. The adjustable rear control arms let the back of the car be set to match.

The tire is a 200 treadwear extreme-performance summer tire, still street legal, and built explicitly for grassroots motorsport: autocross, time attack, HPDE and club endurance. It replaced the RE-71RS, which held the same job on the same grids for years. These are chosen for peak grip across a run measured in seconds, not for tread life, and they are usually trailered or at least driven gently to the event.

Nanuq White, and a Grille That Changed Color

The paint is Nanuq White. The grille is a PPF color change, and paint protection film also covers the front, the fenders, the rear and a hood and rear stripe. Side skirts finish the exterior.

Inside it is stock, down to the Harman Kardon audio. That is the joke in the name: seventeen listed modifications, and the interior is exactly as Mini built it. STOCKish.

Two Helmets

"The smiles that this car has put on his face has made every wrench turn worth it."

What a Navigator Actually Does

"Navigator" is not a courtesy title in autocross. Every event begins with a course walk, because the layout is new each time and nobody gets a practice lap on it. Competitors pace the cones on foot, sometimes several times, committing the sequence to memory: which gates are slaloms, where the course doubles back on itself, which cone marks the late apex that decides the next three seconds.

A driver who is a tenth of a second behind on recognizing the next element is already too late to set up for it. A second set of eyes that has walked the same course and knows what is coming is a real advantage, and the passenger seat is the only place in motorsport where you can give someone that job and have them feel every input while they do it. Steve did not build a car with a jump seat. He built a car with a crew.

400 to 450 at the Wheels

The build is not finished and Steve does not pretend otherwise: "We have just begun our journey in this and look forward to making the car more competitive and of course faster and faster."

The published plan is a front-mount intercooler, already ordered, then water-methanol injection, a flex fuel kit, charge pipes, a downpipe, forged pistons and rods, and a hybrid turbo. The stated goal is roughly 400 to 450 horsepower at the wheels.

Against a 201 horsepower factory figure at the crank, that target is ambitious in a way the parts list supports rather than contradicts. The front-mount intercooler and the water-methanol injection both attack the same problem the E40 is already working on, which is heat. The forged pistons and rods raise the ceiling on what the bottom end will survive. The hybrid turbo is the part that actually makes the number, and it is sensibly last on the list, after the fuel, the cooling and the internals that have to live behind it.

The Trophy Case

One trophy so far: first place, 2000-to-current all models, at the Shriners Show. That came from a judged show rather than an autocross grid, and the two reward different things; our breakdown of cruise-ins versus judged shows explains what a judging sheet actually scores.

The list that matters more to this family is the one Steve keeps of what his son has done: professional drift cars with Vaughn Gittin Jr., offshore racing boats, nine-second drag cars, indoor skydiving, snow skiing, time trial events and autocross. "I feel extremely lucky that we get to do this as a family and that his smile grows bigger and bigger the faster we go."

See the Full Build

The STOCKish Mini is based in Hazelwood, Missouri, and the family make as many events, shows and pop-up meets as they can. The Missouri car show calendar is the place to look for them. Specs, all 7 gallery photos and Steve's story in his own words are on the 2025 Mini Cooper S "STOCKish Mini" profile page. For more member builds, browse The Garage, or check what's showing near you this weekend.

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