Just thought I'd mention this to everyone getting a GP. I suggest you all call your MA, and/or dealer manager and tell them you want NO ONE to drive your GP. Whenever a special car like this, or the first new M5, or cool cars come into a dealer technicians, sales people, car wash guys, and anyone at the dealer that can get their hands on the keys wants to drive it. They too are excited but it's not their car so they want to run the crap out of it and see if it is really faster or better handling. So the first 10 miles of your car are abused.

How do I know this? I use to work at a dealer and the average brand new car off the truck would have 4 miles on it. So if yours has 20 on it, you can bet thats what happened. Plus I have lots of friends at different dealers and we were talking about this today, and they just started laughing and saying "yup, that would happen".

 

Good luck with this.

Driving the vehicle is part of the pre-delivery saftey inspection requirement from the manufacture (MINIUSA/BMWNA) prior to delivery. The GP has a huge check list of "to do's" prior to delivery (far more complex & extensive in comparison to other MINI models) to customer(s) and one of those requirements is the vehicle have a min of 8-10 miles on it (test drive) to ensure the vehicle is operating properly, both from a mechanical stand point, but as well as a safety standpoint (on top they will fill your gas tank prior to delivery). Good luck trying to get this approved by the GM of any dealer you purchased (or plan to purchase, as not all 500 have been sold @ this time) as even they do not have the authority to release a brand new vehicle to its owner prior to completion of a safety inspection, disabling of transportation mode and test drive to ensure that the vehicle is operating properly by a certified trained MINI Service Technician.

I say, stop being paranoid, as long as your vehicle is delivered with low miles (under 20) and shows no signs of excessive hard driving to the tires (which are 50 tread wear kumo ecsta's and will show very easily) then you really don't have much to worry about. I could sit here all day and debate with you weather or not driving a new vehicle hard or for those that believe that driving it miss daisy style for the first 500 miles is good or bad. Either way you have no control of this.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad (well if you want to look at it like that) news.

 

Stop scaring people with non-sense....to say "the first 10 miles of your car are abused" is ridiculous. As boOst spIKe said, they will all have 8-10 miles on them, all MINI's usually do. Heaven help you should you order a Ferrari one day....as they all have 60-80 miles on them at time of customer delivery.

Some dealers the cars MUST be driven to and from various locations which may be OFF-SITE as they come off truck, go to PDI, get gassed up, get detailed, etc. Guess what, if people want that all to get done, their cars will be driven. Any dealership employee who would take a customer's sold unit out and "run the crap out of it" has zero desire to keep their job. Believe it or not, some dealers and the folks that work there have some integrity and respect other people's future property. Sorry to hear that you and your friends aren't some of them

 

FWIW my "special ordered" JCW I picked up last month had 4 mi. on the odometer.

 

I'd be upset, and i know that sounds crazy. Basicly the person who "PDI'd" your vehicle probably did the bare minimum to prep the vehicle for delivery to you and didn't bother to look it over properly to ensure the vehicle had no issues with it during delivery state side, sitting @ the port or while in transport to your dealership. I can almost guarantee the most that got done to your vehicle was topping off engine oil, set tire pressure, removal of shock collars, disabling of transportation mode and it went to detail. Probably never went on a lift and had the underside of the vehicle inspected for potential damage or leaks. Your PDI checklist was more then likely "pencil whipped".

You'd be surprised at how many vehicles will incur damage during pre-delivery or just had/have issues prior to delivery. That's the whole reason vehicles are "Inspected & Test Driven" prior to handing them to sales or better the owner. Nothing is worse then having an upset customer that their vehicle they just purchased has issues with it that could have been solved or better avoided had the technician simply did his job and properly inspected & test drove the vehicle, it ends up leaving a bad taste in the new owners mouth about the manufactures product as well as the dealership they just purchased their brand new vehicle from.

 

Think what you guys want but this is a quote I read this week from a dealer tech
"someone at our shop has been driving ours a little hard. the fronts are showing wear already and no it's not me. i only drove it once for technical reasons. hell we can't keep people out of the stupid thing lol."

 

I'm sure not all dealerships allow employees to "test drive" new vehicles, but Way is right. It does happen whether you want to believe it or not.

-edit-
I'm not only talking about Mini or the GP. I know for a fact that this happened at many Toyota dealerships when the Supra twin turbo was released and Acura dealerships when the NSX was released..

 

waiting for the stories. Anybody?

 

Yep. It was 20 plus years ago and it was the new Toyota single turbo, and I was in the passenger seat with the plastic still on the seats and there was no set-up that had been done on the vehicle. In fact it had been off the truck for all of 20 minutes. That 5 mile test drive sure was not driven calmly or sedately.

But both sides are right. Hard driving is and is not being done on these cars pre-delivery, and you may not know if it has been on your car.

 

You guys are too paranoid. I would find it absolutely amazing that an imported car would have only 4 miles on it when it arrived at the dealership. (domestic car/factory maybe) Cars have to be driven from the assembly line to staging area, then driven to truck/train, the boat, then the reverse when they arrive in the US. My ordered Audi TT-RS had 11 miles when I first saw it at the dealer still wrapped in plastic. The next day I picked it up with 19 on it, PDI checklist showed a 6 mile test drive and my salesperson assistant told me she drove it to a gas station and back to fill it up. My 911 had 72 miles on it including my test drive when I picked it up (oh the horrors!). IMHO, there's pretty much nothing that could have been done on it that would have permanently scarred it seeing as how Porsche engines are dyno'ed before being installed, etc.
I'm not saying OP's stuff never happens, but I'd like to think better dealerships have checks and balances to prevent outright abuse by their own personnel.

 

My 02 Mustang GT came from another dealer with 100m on it. It was drivien from another state to the dealership. I was not happy but that's the way it went. I still have it. 32,500m and it is the best car I ever owned mechanically. The (showroom)LaurelEdition I bought was being taken to events to promote it. It had 250 on it. I was not happy. It has about 6500m and nothing negative. I plan on looking at a GP Fri morning. The sales person said their GP's are not taken for a test drive. They do not want any problems. However every sales person is different....I'll see if their nose grows while I'm looking at the GP. If I am 100% interested in buying it when I see it I'll drive it first...and take care of it. I do not beat cars. Never did. Never will. If I decide I do not want it I will not test it out. I'll follow up. I'm expecting it to have around 7-15 miles on it....and flawless tires

 

I wonder if there's a greater level of professionalism with general staff at for example, Porsche or Ferrari dealers? I mean they get special cars day after day, where as a GP is far and few between. Probably not... people are people

Anyways, there was this incident in Cali:

http://www.bmwblog.com/2011/09/06/de...aboard-bmw-1m/

 

If I do get a GP I'm definitely installing a tracker.

 

Guys.....it's a car, really?

 

What that's blasphemy.

 

Picked up a new custom ordered JCW Coupe last week. 8 miles on the odometer and they had to fix a faulty trasmission solenoid or it would have been less. Wife's new MCC a month before had 7.

 

My car had 5 miles when I took delivery.


On a second note tho I did happen to think of the new GP delivery like the way that one video went viral on lots of forums of the two techs from BMW somewhat abusing a guys 1M a year ago. If I recall that guy was called by his sales person and asked "if he saw his car in the news" and then it ended up being his car. It wasn't mentioned until after he bought the car, and even then probably wouldn't have been had the news not gotten a hold of the video.

 

Valets can have lots of fun with it too. Dude, where's my GP?

 

Mine had 20 and my mp4 had 75 but they both run great and covered under warranty

 

Having been part of the PDI for GP # 0496 this morning, I can tell you if any of the service department (the only ones authorized to drive a PDI besides the lot attendant and the sales manager) were to be "taking it for a spin" or any car for that matter, it would mean getting fired. Yes, I drove it, from the service drive to a parking spot out front where it was quickly taken over to the detail department, cleaned up for the showroom and brought back to the showroom floor or out on the display pad out front.

The suspension is what is making the GP have more miles on it after a PDI than others. It has to be adjusted manually and tested.