My wife has a '12 MCS with Xenon headlights. First thing she does after starting is turn the headlights on to mimic DRL. I recently discovered you can configure the car for DRL via the button on the stalk, which I just did. It seems to me that all it does is keep the headlights and tail lights on all the time regardless if you manually turn them on or off. So, is that pretty much what it does? Reason I ask, I have DRL on my Mustang. When the headlights are turned off, the headlights will remain on at a reduced brightness and the tail lights are off. Hope I'm making sense here..

 

Yes, that's exactly what it does. Xenon bulbs can't be dimmed so they couldn't do that, and MINI didn't add separate DRL lighting. They do sell an expensive LED DRL retrofit that fits into the fog light locations.

 

Yes... The drl sucks.

There was like 2-3 other threads recently posted on the same thing.

The retrofit kit however is bad ***

 

If you have adaptive headlights, the DRLs will not "adapt" until headlights are signaled to be on.

 

Also, for the LED DRLs, the daytime running light option MUST be turn deactivated as part of the installation. Otherwise, you will not receive the full halos.