Howdy from TX.

Just bought my daughter an '06 R53 Automatic. My research 9 mos ago convinced me to steer her away to slightly more practical and less problematic, but fate intervened and a minor fender bender totaled her Beetle giving us a second chance. A quick find after refreshing my research and we now have a beautiful blue/white S in seemingly good shape with 84k.

I have a number of minor issues to fix (door lock actuator anyone?) but all in all it's a neat little car I have to admit.

I have found these types of forums invaluable for my many car projects and I expect this will be no different, so thanks in advance!

 

Congrats! They are neat little cars. Good luck with it!

 

Congrats swaayze. Would love to see some pix when you have the chance. I love my R53 and have had many miles of grins, fun and performance. We are not allowed to post links here but if you check our website you can find out what you need about the door actuator (mine had the same problem) along with free service and maintenance info.

We've been doing this for over 40 years so if you have any questions, please ask! Welcome to NAM!

Drive Hard. Drive Safe. Keep Grinning.

 

Thanks, will check out your site.

Here she be:

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

Very nice! Love that color with the white roof. That's the exact color combo of my first race Mini, before the team got ahold of it and painted it traffic signal yellow to match the two other team cars.

Drive Hard. Drive Safe. Keep Grinning.

 

Thanks mdaz.

Yeah MM, blue is my favorite color and this in particular is very pleasing. Plus, it matches her HS colors, so even though she preferred green I made an executive decision that I think she's pretty happy about

 

There's a place in my heart for the classic blue/white combo. Great choice!
At some point you may need some replacement parts and/or some upgrade parts. We've got nearly every part required to rebuild your WHOLE MINI here on our site!

 

Thanks Outmotoring. Got your and MM's sites bookmarked!

 

Welcome. Car looks really clean as it's nice to see them 10yrs later well taken care of as we see cars all the time just beat.

Door lock actuator is not too bad to do, just follow the instructions.

 

Thanks! Thinking we might've gotten kinda lucky finding this one in our price range (~$6k).

 

Hi and welcome to NAM, swaazye. You deffinately got a nice looking 06/gen 1 R53. The 05 and 06 models are the best of the gen 1 Mini group. I am partial to them and have an 05 R53 that I drive daily.
I buy and sell many minis, in the hopes of keeping these great driving cars on the road!

 

Thanks Wayne. She wanted the green you have but I did the shopping