Google maps says 49.0 miles and 1 hour 7 minutes. The time estimate is spot on, although I'm guessing it'll take me three times that duration when I pick up my car and bring it home.

~Neal

 

Wow, I'm lucky. I'm 15 minutes from Herb Chambers and 30 minutes from MoP.

 

Aw come on, the Mountain View haul aint too bad

You should know by now that Monterey County doesn't have anything that modern metropolises have, sad but true. Not to mention we probably wouldn't *want* a MINI dealer in Seaside...

I used to live in Carmel (there right now) but now living in Santa Cruz and working in Mountain View makes the dealer trip a bit easier.

 

Actually, much of that is crap (no offense to the poster, but to the post).

#1 Exclusivity. If they want to be so exclusive why does every MINI dealer also own a BMW dealership? If you call NHTSA, they don't have MINI listed as a brand, only BMW. Would it really hurt so much to have a MINI kiosk at the BMW dealer? Harley-Davidon sells and services Buell and they have no trouble keeping the brands separate.

#2 Training. What exactly is included in the 3 year maintenance? Oil change w/ filter. Check the brakes and fluid levels. Where is the training involved in being able to offer this at other than a MINI dealer? They could even have MINI approved independents to do this stuff.

#3 Dealer Network. What's more important to BMW? Satisfied customers or that dealers make a ton of money over what they already do selling BMWs. If it was so important to satisfy the dealers, why do they put some 20 miles apart from one another?

These are not facts, they're arbitrary policies that can easily be changed. Most of the people aren't asking to be able to get major work done locally, but just not have to drive 200 miles to get their oil changed, or maybe get a quick diagnosis so they don't have to make multiple trips to a far away dealer to get something fixed.

The next thing they'll do is have us ship our cars back to England for repairs. It might be easier...

 

I'm lucky to be in Santa Cruz county, where there are several within a reasonable distance. The closest is about 45 minutes away (I measure distance in units of time) though I drive past that one to a dealer that is about 75 minutes away.

- James
2007 MCS CR/CR

 

38 miles

 

SF over MTV? Why? I live in SC as well

 

57 miles

I wish the local BMW dealer could service MINI too... still, Sandia MINI has
been pretty good so far, so I guess I won't complain. Could be worse, I suppose.

 

It would annoy me more to take my car somewhere for regular maintenance and then have to go somewhere else for real work. I'm also sure that MINI doesn't want to farm this work out because it would cost the MINI dealers easy money. If anyone could do it then how would some service departments stay viable?

 

For $100+ an hour, I'm sure they're struggling through. There are plenty of people who'd still choose to bring their cars back to point of purchase. We're not talking about rocket science. It's a freakin' oil change. And if it was done by a BMW dealer, the money really ends up in the same pockets.

 

How does the money come back to the same pockets if a BMW dealer does it?

 

(Decorah, IA to Bloomington, MN)

As my buddy oldsbear says, ya gotta have faith...

 

~80 miles, which is about 2 hours with moderate traffic.

 

20 minutes

 

lol Don't get me started. If I were to drive from here to my nearest dealer (Nortwest MINI in Tacoma, WA), it would be approximately 2,767 miles. It's approximately 1429.86 miles if you do a straight shot across using Google Earth. Hehe.

My MCS is actually at NW MINI right now, it was shipped from here to Tacoma.

I wish the BMW dealership in Anchorage would service MINIs...that would have just been about a 12 hour ferry ride, and a few hours of driving...

 

Wow! Do you ship it there every time it needs service? How expensive is that? It certainly would be great if BMW could (would) service MINIs...

 

Actually, I'd say the same thing here.

Yes, BMW and MINI are tied together because ultimately MINI is part of the BMW family. Behind the scenes it makes sense to have some shared operations. But, BMW/MINI want all customer-facing environments for MINI to be exclusive. MINI's CSI results show over and over again that in dealerships where the service department for BMW and MINI are combined under one roof, customers tend to be much less satisfied with the service they receive and how they are treated compared to BMW customers. Several have complained that they specifically dislike having to be in the BMW area for service. With this evidence, MINI would never agree to a change in policy to allow servicing MINIs at non-MINI franchised BMW dealers.

MINI is also going around as we speak asking all existing dealers that are still in shared space with BMW to invest in fully exclusive facilities, and the are requiring this of all new dealers that will open in the future. What message does MINI send to dealers if they force them to invest $$$ to go exclusive, but then they turn around and let any BMW dealer start servicing MINI?

I said in my post that BMW dealers would have no problem with maintenance, but would run into issues if they had to start doing other repairs. It is going to be a hard case to sell to MINI if you are proposing that BMW dealers only offer maintenance service on MINIs, I can't see that they'd go through the trouble of changing the rules just so BMW dealers can do an oil change on a MINI. As I stated (and Rastven clearly agrees) I wouldn't want the BMW techs to be able to do anything else, especially since they would not have the training and it would not make sense for the dealers to train them either.

If you take away MINI dealers' maintenance business, they will face financial losses and it will ultimately hurt MINI dealerships. This will create big problems with MINI dealers and their relationship with BMWNA, not to mention the potential legal problems of BMWNA violating the dealers' franchise agreements. Service (and the associated parts business) is a necessary component of a profitable dealership, if you take this away from your dealers and cause them to lose profit opportunities that they are entitled to you're asking for trouble. Sales alone will not support a dealership in the long term, you need strong parts and service business and this policy would actually take business away from the MINI dealers. If you make it more difficult to operate a MINI dealership, you're going to see less investment in MINI dealerships, existing dealers will spend less money to improve/expand their dealerships and it will be hard to attract new dealers in new markets if they have to compete with other non-MINI dealers in their market for MINI service.

As for having dealers within 20 miles of eachother, clearly there is a market that supports having 2 dealers within 20 miles or else BMW would not have identified the need for 2 MINI dealers in that market.

 

300 miles, 4+ hours. Found a local European Mechanic with the current diagnostic tool to read and reset codes. I will have him look at any issues first. If it turns out to be a big item I will go to the dealer for warranty coverage. The little things I will do locally.

 

Can maintenance be done by a 'qualified mechanic' or does it have to go to a dealer to keep the warranty in force?

 

They can not force you to do the maintenance with them, but you must perform all the required maintenance to keep the warranty in place. If you can provide proof that it was done elsewhere you should be ok so long as they followed the list of required services and used the appropriate parts.

 

Four hours, eighteen minutes.

 

Mine is 2 hours away...and then when I get out there, there's another dealer just one mile from that. I agree with you totally, they need more. I mentioned it to my MA, said he should put a word in to corporate that gets a dealer closer to me. He gave me some line about there not being enough cars. Um, I can drive about a half hour and pick up a brand new Jaguar here, but not a MINI. It's crazy if you ask me. I understand Jags have a longer history in the states, but the economic situation of the people living here is vastly more suited to MINI than to Jag. So, really, I don't quite understand it. And I'm seeing more MINIs here from time to time on my daily drive, so there is a market for these cars outside of major metropolitan areas.

 

THREE MILES!!!

 

5+ hours in normal traffic. There are 2 Mini dealers in NC (Charlotte & Winston Salem) but the closest one to me is in VA Beach. I really wish they'd open a Mini dealership in Raleigh. That's only 2.5 hours away.

 

2.7 miles for me. I don't know if I would have bought the mini if I had to drive more than 2 hours. Luckily their are 2 other dealers within 2 hours from here.