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1st GearNew members: make an initial post and introduce yourself as you shift from Neutral to First Gear. Current members: meet some of the new members.
Hello all! Just a quick intro, as is usual and customary in these parts. As of 3 weeks ago, I am a first time MINI owner and, quite possibly now, and lifetime MINI owner! I know it seems a bit cliche from many new owners of all sorts of cars, but I have honestly never been immediately hooked to a car as I have been to my new (to me) MINI.
I sort of fell on a decent deal also in a pretty stressful time. So here is the quick story (don't worry, I know what you all want, and the pictures are forthcoming!).
I am a lead site IT Analyst for a very large, very global, chemical company. I love my job and the drive isn't terrible - about 25 miles one way on a divided 4 lane highway through the country of the beautiful foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My family and I are pretty anti-debt and, somewhat, frugal with our money. Well, maybe conservative and smart may be a better term, because we do like to have things! Case in point, my daily driver was what one would consider a "beater". It was a 2003 Chevy Tracker. The black paint had seen its fair share of sun and much of the clear coat on the top and hood was gone. I couldn't complain though. It has been very reliable of the 13 years we had it. I trusted it, no big problems. Then suddenly out of the blue, it starting having problem after problem and I soon realized that after a $600 repair job on one part of the motor, it developed a death knock, so to speak. I couldn't trust it anymore.
I spent the next 2 weeks strenuously searching for the right vehicle. I already had set myself a budget of 10k since this was going to be a daily driver. As the days went by, I was disheartened at each passing hour because I could not find ANYTHING! I knew I wanted a hatchback for sure. My oldest son, who is 18 now, recently bought a Mazda 2 and I had been driving it and it was kinda fun to drive. I had been searching for a few years older Ford Focus or Fiesta ST, VW GTI, etc. I found few leads but they fizzled out. I was getting pretty stressed at this point in time.
In one last stitch effort, I remembered a large dealership whose site I happened to not even go to in my search. As I filtered it down by all my wants, there it was..in all its glory. A 2011 MINI Cooper justa, 50k miles (decent), 6 seed getrag (great), and from the pics it was very clean and well taken care of clearly. CARFAX was clean and the price was already great to start with. Quite below my budget already and I was able to negotiate an event better price which included a 1 year/30K mile warranty.
I had always admired MINIs from afar, but figured they were out of my price range which, up until 2 years ago, they would have been but after getting laid off due to a 30 year old company suddenly closing up shop I landed the best job I have ever had.
The dealer was great. The car was actually 100 miles away at one of their non-local locations and I talked the salesguy into transporting it via hauler to the local dealer so I could test drive. In the meantime, I started researching the MINI. I bet you all can guess what I found? Words like unreliable, death rattle, timing chain issues, high ownership costs, but also fun as hell to drive. I will admit I was a little skeptical and disappointed at first, wondering if I was in for trouble.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I researched and read, I started to see a pattern and my thoughts on the matter solidified. I realized that a lot of the bad reviews and problems, like the timing chain issues, seemed to be more prevalent with pre-2011 models, especially the S.
Another thing I picked up on and thought about is this....a used car is a used car, I have every bit of getting a high cost of ownership in any similar year, condition, and mileage vehicle. I also realized that many of the people who had problems came across as not even knowing the difference between a monkey wrench and a screwdriver and I happen to have been working on my own vehicles since the 1989 VW Jetta Wolfsburg I bought when I was 19 that had 198,000 miles on it when I bought it! (That was Not a typo!). I know my limits, but feel capable enough to save some money when needed. The motor in the MINI is a great one, but not super complicated and huge (a good thing). This fact, coupled with my driving style (which is not abusive or hard), and the 1 year warranty I was determined to get made me realize that, so long as the test drive was fine, this was the car for me. Call it fate, destiny, serendipity, what have you...
From the moment I pushed the button I was hooked. The test drive was so much fun I literally don't remember a whole lot of it because I was too excited. My wife and youngest daughter was with me and my wife was reserved but my daughter (who has since informed me that I need to be sure to take care of this MINI because she wants it when she is 16, she is 9 currently) was immediately in love with it as well.
Whew, wow I said quick story...would hate to see the long story! The long of the short of it is that I, of course, bought it and drive it home that day. I could go on and on, but without further adieu...
Here is my R56, daily companion, Pepper White w/Checker accents 2011 Justa
I thought I took some pics of the back, but I guess not!
I love it how it is, but do want to make it "mine". I don't plan much, but what I do have planned is to black out the chrome using plasti-dip, a monochrome union jack full size vinyl for the top (not 100% on the UJ, as there are some that are really cool that I have seen), I would like to get the black OEM MINI Multi-Spoke wheels, and want to retro fit rally lights - though will probably go with Hella as OEM is a tad expensive for that and Hella is a good brand.
So that is it! I look forward to chatting with you all in the future.
Great introduction, Mike. Welcome to NAM and glad you're hooked on your MINI. The plastidip will work great for blacking out the chrome bits. A lot of members go that route. We have the Genuine rally lights and hella ones below if you want to check out the comparison with the price. Items will need matching grille, mounting hardware, and interior switch. I can help with this when it comes time to doing yours. Looks like a very clean purchase. Be sure to enjoy!
Congrats, like the checkers, as you can see on my R52 I like checkers also.
Haha - I like the subtlety! My soon-to-be 9 year old daughter loves naming things, pets, but especially cars...we usually discuss with her and come to a "mutually agreeable" name. She has not settled but keeps saying she likes the name Checkers...so we shall see!
Originally Posted by PelicanParts.com
Great introduction, Mike. Welcome to NAM and glad you're hooked on your MINI. The plastidip will work great for blacking out the chrome bits. A lot of members go that route. We have the Genuine rally lights and hella ones below if you want to check out the comparison with the price. Items will need matching grille, mounting hardware, and interior switch. I can help with this when it comes time to doing yours. Looks like a very clean purchase. Be sure to enjoy!
I will definitely check those out. These will probably be one of the last of my current to-do list for now (but who knows, I may change my mind soon!). I will slink around here to see if i can come up with some previous posts on the subject. I am mostly interested on pros v. cons of one over the other (besides the biggest ones of cost and brand). Thanks again!
[QUOTE=Mike Miller;4184785]Haha - I like the subtlety! My soon-to-be 9 year old daughter loves naming things, pets, but especially cars...we usually discuss with her and come to a "mutually agreeable" name. She has not settled but keeps saying she likes the name Checkers...so we shall see!
