Hey, everyone, glad to find what looks like a good forum for me and my recently acquired 2004 r50. I've had Alice for a couple weeks (surely not an original name for a Cooper, but I'm keeping it), and I really enjoy driving this car. I'm not going to win any drag races, but I don't care. It's definitely a step up.

My previous ride was a used (bought in 2000 with 47k miles) 1995 Ford Ranger that had 192k on it when I decided that it wasn't worth it to spend $600 on a flywheel replacement, as well as the rest of the ***** that was about to fail on that thing... and I'm was (still am, really) low on cash and good on credit so I got Alice after a fairly brief search for used cars in my area. I wanted a low mileage 2-door car or maybe a small truck, although I was kinda tired of trucks after the Ranger. Actually, I've only ever had one car (an '81 Camaro, my first set of wheels at age 16), the rest have been trucks. Anyway...

I could talk about what I like about my MINI, and I will, I'm sure. But I'm also sure you guys know why MINIs are cool; that's why we're all here. So I'll wait on that for now. I'm going to talk about a few mostly minor gripes, and hopefully you guys can help me minimize them. (to be continued)