Hi everyone! I purchased my first Mini on Saturday(2 days ago), an 08 Cooper S, 6MT. Buying the Mini was actually a pleasant surprise that emerged from a bad situation.

Two weeks ago I got into an accident(not my fault) on my way home from class and totaled my 2008 Honda Fit, only 47k miles on it. Due to the low mileage, the insurance payout was quite good. It was enough to get me into an 08 Cooper S with 47k miles. Same year, same mileage as the Honda, great upgrade =]. I will miss my Honda though. It was just as fun to drive as the Mini(albeit not as fast). My Honda had your basic bolt-ons, coilovers, throttle controller, front and rear struts, front and rear swaybars, shortshifter, and all sorts of JDM goodies .

Here are my first impressions of the Mini:

The whistle of the turbo sounds awesome. This is my first time owning a car with factory boost =]. The sound from the spooling and factory wastegate is actually quite loud, I love it!

1) My first impression of the car is that it feels very solid. You can really feel the build quality, especially by the weight of the doors, especially coming from a history of Japanese cars.

2) The steering feels a bit more stiff compared to my Honda but I'm not sure if that's due to increased responsiveness or shorter wheel base?. The Cooper handles quite well but I haven't had a chance to do any "spirited" driving yet so I can't compare the Cooper S' suspension to the modified suspension in my Honda.

3) Also, the reason that I haven't done any "Spirited" driving yet is because the height of the brake pedal and accelerator feel a bit awkward. The brake pedal is higher(or sticks up more) than the accelerator(which is closer down to the floor). This makes it hard to heel-toe. In my Honda, the accelerator and brake were at the same height, making it easy to heel-toe. Is this just my Cooper?

4) The only issue that I have, and maybe someone can chime in about it whether it is an actual issue, or just the way the Cooper is built, but to me the shifting/gear box feels quite sloppy and soft. The shifting on the Honda felt very solid and crisp with little to no wiggle of the shifter while it was in gear. On the Cooper, the shifting feels very soft and the shifter is able to wiggle and has some give to it when its in gear. Due to this, I'm not always sure if the shifter is completely in gear or if it needs to be pushed in further. Maybe this is due to the much longer shifter? My Honda had a short shifter. Maybe the longer shifter in the Mini has some flex and give, resulting in this? Does anyone else feel this way?

 

Greetings, and welcome to the boards. I'm a SoCal native, so hope to see you driving around LA.

I haven't had much issues performing heal and toe so I'm not sure what to say there, but it'll just take a bit of getting used to. The R56 shifter definitely has quite a bit of play in it, hence my purchase of a CAE shifter, but that's something not a lot of people want to deal with on a regular basis such as I, but you can always get a Craven SSK and call it a day. That's probably the best non $1k ssk out there for the 2nd gen platform.

Again, welcome and hope to see you around!

 

welcome welcome

 

Welcome to the MINI world!! Join our awesome club and hang out with us! We have events all over So Cal.

www.clubscmm.com

You'll enjoy the car even more when you're in a long line of MINIs heading up the mountain twisties.

 

Thanks for the welcome everyone!