X-raid, headquartered in Trebur near Frankfurt am Main, had previously campaigned the Mini All4 Racing — a closed-body SUV-style car derived from the Mini Countryman. When regulations and competition landscape shifted in the late 2010s, the team developed the John Cooper Works Buggy as a lighter, purpose-built open-frame alternative. Where the All4 Racing had resembled a recognisable production-based vehicle, the JCW Buggy adopted a more skeletal buggy architecture to maximize suspension travel and reduce weight over demanding terrain.
The vehicle debuted at the 2018 Dakar Rally, which that year traversed Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. X-raid entered two cars, with Finnish driver Mikko Hirvonen and American Bryce Menzies behind the wheel. Neither completed the event — Hirvonen finished 19th and Menzies retired — leaving the first outing as a development run rather than a competitive result.
The 2019 season brought a major driver influx. Stéphane Peterhansel, Carlos Sainz, and Cyril Despres — all veterans of the rival Peugeot programme — transferred to the X-raid Mini setup. Despres delivered the team's best Dakar result that year, finishing fifth overall, while Sainz completed in 13th after taking a stage win. Peterhansel retired from the Dakar but subsequently used the car to win the 2019 FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies season — the first major title for the JCW Buggy platform.
The 2020 Dakar Rally was the first edition held in Saudi Arabia, establishing the event in its current Middle Eastern home. Sainz and Peterhansel were the team's primary entries. Sainz drove a disciplined race, accumulating four stage victories and managing his overall pace to claim the outright win — the JCW Buggy's first Dakar Rally title. Peterhansel supported with a third-place finish, also contributing four stage wins of his own. The result confirmed the car's competitiveness on the vast, high-speed terrain of the Arabian Peninsula.
At the 2021 Dakar Rally, again held in Saudi Arabia, Peterhansel reversed the 2020 hierarchy to take the overall victory himself, giving the JCW Buggy consecutive Dakar wins and adding to his own record career tally of Dakar Rally victories. The back-to-back success established the car as the dominant force in the car category at a period when Toyota Gazoo Racing's Hilux was its closest rival.
The Mini John Cooper Works Buggy represents the evolution of the X-raid programme from production-derived cars toward purpose-built rally raid hardware. Its three-season arc — development debut, FIA World Cup title, and two Dakar victories — proved the open-frame buggy concept viable at the highest level of cross-country rallying. The car was succeeded by the Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus as X-raid continued to develop its competitive platform, but the JCW Buggy's record of six Dakar stage victories by Sainz alone, combined with team victories, makes it a landmark vehicle in the history of rally raid.