Who would have guessed, buying a car would end up being a lesson of patience...

Mid June I get a phone call. "Hey, want to drive my 07 MCS?" I hear my friend ask. "Heck yeah" I say. Next morning, as I am handed the key my friend jokes, "this is going to be expensive for you." My response, "Yeah right, I hope you mean I end up buying one for myself and not buying one for you after wrecking this one!"

200 miles of spirited driving on some of my favorite motorcycling twisty backroads and I was hooked. What followed was roughly 2 weeks of using Mini's website to configure my dream Mini. A trip to the dealer (100 miles away) to decide color choice and a few other details.

June 30, the order gets placed. The dealer had a waiting list and I had to wait for their allocation before I could get a production number. A week later and I'm climbing the walls. July 25, finally, I have it...it's official, I get the production number.

Scheduled to be built the first week of September, or week 36.

And so it begins, patience.

–noun 1.the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. 2.an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay: to have patience with a slow learner. 3.quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence: to work with patience. 4.Cards (chiefly British). solitaire (def. 1). 5.Also called patience dock. a European dock, Rumex patientia, of the buckwheat family, whose leaves are often used as a vegetable. 6.Obsolete. leave; permission; sufference.
—Synonyms 1. composure, stability, self-possession; submissiveness, sufferance. Patience, endurance, fortitude, stoicism imply qualities of calmness, stability, and persistent courage in trying circumstances. Patienceto bear afflictions with patience. may denote calm, self-possessed, and unrepining bearing of pain, misfortune, annoyance, or delay; or painstaking and untiring industry or (less often) application in the doing of somehing:

 

In the same boat as you except no prod # yet. I try to keep myself busy playing WoW till it gets here.

 

Holy cow, you guys have NO clue how hard it gets the closer your MINI gets! Mine is set to hit Port Hueneme next week, and the wait is KILLING ME!!! LOL!

Hang in there though. These cars are SOOOOOOO worth it!

 

Welcome to MINI-owners-in-waiting hell. We know exactly what you are going through.

My husband's case of impatience is so bad I had to form an entire Support Network to help get him through it (and me too). He's driving us all completely insane.

Welcome to the NAMily!

 

Your account is the norm, rather than the exception- for new/soon-to-be MINI owners. The other version is the "let's go check it out... an hour later you're writing checks". I don't know a single person who has driven a MINI and didn't end up buying or seriously jonesing for one. It doesn't stop there. There will be mods and apparel and events and runs. I hope you're a friendly person because strangers will come up and talk to you. And it still doesn't stop there!

Example: I bought an untouched '03 Cooper off the lot (for brevity, I'll skip that experience). My friend (who likes to annoy me for laughs) kept saying "Why didn't you get the S?" "I don't need a race car. My Cooper is just fine." I would reply. I found my MINI club and great friends, and learned a lot about cars in general. Just shy of three years of loving the Cooper and not needing a "race car", I made the mistake of riding shotgun in an S for 10 minutes- I didn't even drive it! The rest, as they say, is history.

Obviously MINI knew what was up when they named their staff "Motoring Advisor" and not "Sales Person". They truly sell themselves, don't they!

Welcome to the party.

Owner of a 2006 MINI Cooper S

 

You're not kidding on that one. I've never seen a car dealer like this. Customers were literally lined up to talk with the sales people. Probably 15-20 people all interested in cars. I was there on a Saturday and my MA said the weekends are always like this. It wasn't so much as the MAs putting on a sales pitch, it was more like they were just answering questions on features. Most people were already sold on the car before they got there from what I overheard.

I probably wont do many mods to the car. I would like to add gauges for oil pressure, battery, and water temp. Just doesn't seem right to not have water temp. They've got to be clean though. I don't like gauges on the pillers or in "tacked on" pods. If you look at the gauges and think "hey, you added gauges" it's not clean enough for me. Also will be wiring in a V1 radar detector and possibly a mount/power for a Garmin 76CSx (just for trip logging). The Mini's built in nav will do the navigating.