Wow, I like you're newest one the best! She is a beaut.

 

Awesome thread with great pictures and a great write-up! Thanks for sharing your love of Mini's I especially like the new JCW

 

We're now moving onto MINI number 6, who will replace Tristan.

Tristan is getting a bit long in the tooth now, he's just turned 6 years old. We know we like R56 MINIs and we're somewhat suspicious of the F56 which is coming. So we decided to get one of the last R56 MINIs before they were no longer available.

A new MINI also has a few advantages, apart from being 6 years newer. As we autocross Tristan, the EDLC which is part of the DTC is interesting. The new one is also slightly more powerful, all of 3hp, hardly noticeable, but it might be worth 0.1sec. A new Cooper can also be configured with 17" wheels (which are 7" wide), under the proposed rules next year that will give the option to use 16x7 wheels, which is also interesting (compared to 16x6.5 currently available). More mundanely, he will also have bluetooth, something we've never managed to retrofit, as well as steering wheel audio controls. The new ones are also rated for slightly better fuel economy.

One theory was to configure the new MINI just like Tristan, but certain options are no longer available. The other theory was I liked the look of the Hyde park or Green park edition MINIs. I've never seen a Hyde Park, and they recently changed it to have a lighter roof. I saw a Green Park MINI recently, and as I'd heard the roof wasn't noticeably green and looked more black. There wasn't a Hyde Park available to see at the dealer, so we went for the Blue/White like Tristan, which would be our third blue/white MINI.

The previous two blue/white ones also had white wheels, but annoyingly MINI have discontinued the white wheels. They're no longer even available as a dealer installed option. We also didn't want to go with silver wheels, so the other choice is black. The only black wheels I've liked are the black star bullets like Algy has. The other black wheels are too glossy for my liking.

That just left us configuring the interior colours. I wanted something distinct from Algy's interior (which is black cloth/leather seats, piano black surfaces and a satellite grey colour line), but the available options were making that more likely, at least we know we like that combination. One alternative was to go with polar beige cloth/leather seats (we like the cloth/leather seats), possibly paired with a polar beige colour line, or pepper white surfaces, and a contrasting choice of surface or colourline. We saw a roadster with polar beige seats and colour line, and piano black surfaces. We also went looking for a MINI with pepper white surfaces. There was one with black seats and a black colourline.

We eventually decided on the black seats, black colour line and pepper white surfaces combination after taking a test drive. We took a test drive just to make sure nothing was objectionable about the new models. One strageness was even though the sport button was on, I had trouble giving it enough gas when taking off, which is the problem I have when the sport button is not on. I also liked the weighting of the steering (in sport mode), its heavier than Algy's which I always thought was too light.

Apart from that the new one is configured much like Tristan. We gave him the sport package (sports seats, 17" wheels, DTC, spoiler, fog lights) and also the sport suspension. There's also auto A/C, the mirror with garage door opener, and a rear fog light. The iPod/BlueTooth and steering wheel controls are now standard.

Here's what he should look like:

 

I never did make an update about the new MINI.

We picked him up on June 30th, on the way home from an autocross. We're now calling him "Bertie", he's named after George IV (being our 6th MINI).

3 weeks later we'd managed to get to the magic 1200 miles for break in, so we took him to his first autocross. We ran both Bertie and Tristan, we each drove one in the morning, swapped the wheels and drove the other in the afternoon. Much to our surprise Tristan turned out to be faster, so we ran with Tristan for the rest of the season. We think the difference is that Tristan has gathered some oversteer recently, we're not sure why.

The next thing we need to do is modify Bertie to add a bit of oversteer. In the meantime we still have Tristan. We're juggling 3 MINIs with only a two car garage. Bertie now has the "IPOD MNI" plate. Tristan's final event is this weekend, then we can retire him, after having analysed his suspension. We're running Bertie as our autocross car for the future. Anyone want to buy Tristan?

Pictures: http://btwyx.com/Bertie/




It can be confusing having two nearly identical MINIs in the garage.

 

We're at it again. After 3 years not driving a MINI because my clutch knee gave out, we just ordered our 7th version. Bertie got sold in 2017 to an autocrosser, Cathy still drives Algy, but he's probably going to get traded in when the new one arrives. In the meantime I've been driving "the sensible car" (an Audi A3 etron), so I've gotten used to larger more cushy cars.

Not being able to drive manual anymore, I've been looking forward to MINI introducing the DCT to the US (they've been distinctly slow about that). I had been considering compromising and testing out a MNI with the ZF 8 speed (I'm really not fond of slush boxes). But when looking over the configurator yesterday, it said the DCT was now available, I became much more enthusiastic about going looking at MINIs.

So today we went to look at the 5 door, and the Clubman. One thing we were hesitant about is the options, the configurator is not half as flexible as it used to be, and it forces you to take options you might not otherwise want. In particular, I really didn't want a sunroof, but to get any reasonable options, you need to take the "Signature" version, which includes a sunroof. On complaining about that, our helpful new motoring advisor, Luis, said he could actually delete that from the build on his system. I got even more enthusiastic at that point.

The first thing we did was sit in a 5 door. That felt definitely cramped, particularly with the sunroof. We also sat in the clubman which gave us a lot more room. So we then took test drives in the 5 door, and the Clubman (both S's with sports seats and DCT transmission). The 5 door started to feel not too bad, but the seat felt like it was 6 inches too high up, it just didn't feel right. The seats were also rather narrow, and I got a pain in the thigh. Then the Clubman felt a lot bigger, about as big as the Audi I've got used to. It also came with lounge leather seats, which were a lot more comfortable. The lounge leather sports seats seem to be a different frame, which is wider and fits us better.

So we decided on a Clubman with the lounge leather sports seats. Then we had to decide on the rest of the options, we decided on another Blue and White version, just like the three previous JustaCoopers. Luis deleted the sunroof on his system and that saved us $650.

 

As usual, I never did update this thread. We're calling the new one "Max", because he's so big, and he reminds me a little of the Austin Maxi the family used to have when I was little.

Max arrived March 16th, which was the day after we got back from our big vaction (to New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii), and the day before the county went into lockdown for the first time due to the Pandemic. So we rushed out that day to pick him up. Here we're on the way home and stopped for a sandwich.


Max at Dusk

And Max still at the dealer, where you can admire his lack of sunroof.



Max at the dealer

We hardly got to drive him due to the pandemic, I was working from home most of the year, and then I retired, so I have even less need to drive. Also due to the pandemic, we've hardly gone out driving. We've driven him to Santa Cruz, up the San Mateo coast, and up to San Francisco, not very far at all. So 16 months later, we're up to 3000 miles. He replaced both Algy (the 2012 JCW), which we traded in, and the Audi, which got returned at the end of the lease.