Hello everyone. Very stoked to be a part of this community! Can't wait to make it official with a Mini purchase. As our family is growing towards needing a third car, I've been checking Mini Mania, Bring a Trailer, and eBay pretty much every day for the last like 8 months. Kinda funny to see cars listed on eBay, even on the others as well appear, disappear, and then reappear several months later, proclaiming to be a "new listing". But I'm searching to try to find a LHD, 1275, with air conditioning. (We are in the Gulf Coast as I mentioned). And I've not seen very many at all appear with those 3 characteristics. And then in our price range. So I was thinking - It's a classic car...I don't need air conditioning! And then I started thinking what climbing into the car in August would be like sans-air...and so I then took a peek at the modern models on a whim, having sat in a brand new, REALLY expensive JCW at a Mini dealership ...And I was surprised that the type of cars I'm looking at, whether classic or modern, are in the same $10-15K range interestingly enough. Don't have a ton of money. Wife and I both teach in public schools. For the modern, I've kinda been looking exclusively (nationwide to find some options) at the JCW models from early 2000's up to around 2012, as that's when the price tags, and our insurance premiums start to get preventative.

One thing to note - on USClassifiedAds I came across a 2006 GP, they were asking 12,100. I emailed with some initial feelers, and info I got back was not written very well, and ignored a couple questions so I was a bit suspicions from the beginning. Loved the car, and they had like 40 photos of it in a nice climate controlled car collection building somewhere, so I wanted to pursue it. The thing was though, we really need back seats so we can enjoy the Mini with the whole family. Now I'm new here, so I don't want to start any trouble, and how I found this site in the first place was getting here from Googling and locking into a thread about adding the rear seats back into a GP. And I found comments about "why buy a GP if you want 4 seats?" and where a guy took his to TC Kline and had them do it. The photos of the finished job seemed, at least to my rookie eye, to show that it looks pretty sweet, and the GP engine is the "quickest", and for someone like me who doesn't have the time or the money to start mod-ding up a lesser version to meet it, and I don't want to track it, it seemed like a good idea to low ball and see if they took it. (My bad for that crazy run on sentence, speaking of poorly written) Tell them I'm paying cash and just see if they really want to sell. Got a email back saying lets do it. So I asked where it was, and that I would travel to pick it up and drive it home. I just felt better that way. Worst case I'm out a couple hundred, not the whole price of the car. But then they told me, Oh sorry, you can't travel here to Minnesota to get it because the owner just got sent "off-shore" for work (I live in the land of working off-shore and the Gulf Coast is a long you-know-what way from Minnesota!) and that the car was packed in a container and ready to ship right to me. I'd be dealing with a "Surety Bond" company, blah, blah, blah. I said cool, but I need some more proof that this is for real...and haven't heard back from them. Just wondering if anyone has heard if that type of a sale is a scam or not? Is that a credible website?

But to my real question - Mini yes, but---classic or modern? I'm fired up for us to own either. Thinking my son and I could turn a few wrenched doing simple things on the classic. But finding that unicorn of LHD, 1275, air/con, and not crazy expensive seems like it might be too much to hope for. There's a ton of folks who say that maintaining the modern cars is fairly expensive for even simple things like oil changes. Is that true? If we picked up a 2007,8,9 JCW (pretty much just a hardtop 2-door) are we gonna be throwing thousands at it every year? Teachers have a kinda important gig, but we don't bring home a ton of bacon, so I'm trying not to invest in a money pit, no matter how cool and fast they look and go!

One last thing and then I'll stop wasting other's time - if modern seems a better way to go, will I feel a sizable enough difference between the S and the JCW in day to day driving with a bit of heavy foot, or could I save a few $, both on price and insurance, and get plenty of zip from the S? I did have a 2000 Mustang GT some years ago, stock, and I know these minis aren't V8's, but I'm hoping, whether is a 1275 classic, or the modern, to get set back into my seat a bit when I put the hammer down.

I lied - one more question - I'm 6'6" and not that svelte - will I fit in a classic mini? Googling such a thing seems to tell me I'm close to being okay to fit, but I've never sat in one, and can't really find much of an opportunity to test it out, so if there's any other Chewbacas out there like myself who own one or have driven one, I'd love to hear how it was? I'm not thinking I'll be laid back and massage-chair comfy, but we do want to get a stick, and I want to be able to shift and drive it without pulling a Bubba Smith from Police Academy...there I go, showing my age...

Thanks so much everyone, and I'm super glad to be a part of this community.