A major reason I bought a MINI was a favorable Consumer Reports rating. As much as I liked the looks of the car, I would not have bought it if it had gotten bad reviews. I also wasn't willing to buy a new car the first year the new model came out. The new MINIs had been out for a few years when I decided to get one this summer, so I was hoping that most of the major design bugs had been worked out. Near as I can tell, that is pretty much true for MINIs.

Mechanics don't see anything but problem cars ... on the surface, it looks bad that a mechainc would say "don't buy the car" but he's not dealing with the (vast majority of) good cars, just the sick ones.

There will always be cars that are bad right off the assembly line, no matter who builds them. Poor mini-t, you've definitely had a run of very, very bad MINI luck. It is just awful that you've had to deal with all these problems. Whatever you decide to do - stick with the MINI or get a pretty pink STi, I hope everything works out well for you and you can get back to having lots of car fun. The most important thing is for you to be happy with the car!

Vsego khoroshego! (Russian for good luck) (hey, does this website support Cyrillic??) :smile:

MINIangelD

 

Ask a MINI sales person for the stats on the # of bad cars. i'm sure you'll get an honest answer...yeah right! as for consumer reports (i believe it was CR), i saw an issue at borders and the MINI got excellent ratings in performance and handling but got a big fat black dot for reliability. they even stated that they couldn't recommend the car based on the high number of problems reported. A first year car is expected to have some bugs, but the number of problems over the period that i had my car is inexcusable. i had to make numerous trips to the dealer and many times for the same problem over and over. and once one thing was fixed, another problem would arise. and don't even get me started on the auto trunk release that never worked from day one. hopefully 04 owners won't have as many problems. i'm not saying the MINI sucks. its just that coming from BMW, you would expect better build quality. the concept & design of the car is awesome. i still love the look of the MINI, its a neat little car. i would still have my MINI if it weren't for the numerous problems which caused me to loose confidence in the car.

Beastmaster, yeah that’s my car. drove by tonight and sure enough that’s it! i bought my subaru from waipahu and i guess they were having trouble selling it out there. i didn't know they brought it to town.


>>I talked to Aka in sales before he left about the numbers of MINIs that have reported trouble and in total it's just a handful out of about 650+ so far. If you look at Consumer reports their criteria for much better than average rate of trouble is less than about 5% and that would be about 32 MINIs or less. Also their criteria for much worse than average is about 20% which would be about 130. So these problems are a nuisance and not wanted but far from widespread. For every problem MINI I bet there are triple that number in MINIs that give minimal trouble.
>>

 

yup, there are some problem cars and mine is one of them! if i was offered a new mcs with no problems, of course, i'd take it. i never wished to have all these issues.

and let's remember, we own not one, but TWO mcs's and the other one is just fine...



>>Mechanics don't see anything but problem cars ... on the surface, it looks bad that a mechainc would say "don't buy the car" but he's not dealing with the (vast majority of) good cars, just the sick ones.

>>There will always be cars that are bad right off the assembly line, no matter who builds them. Poor mini-t, you've definitely had a run of very, very bad MINI luck. It is just awful that you've had to deal with all these problems. Whatever you decide to do - stick with the MINI or get a pretty pink STi, I hope everything works out well for you and you can get back to having lots of car fun. The most important thing is for you to be happy with the car!
>>
>>Vsego khoroshego! (Russian for good luck) (hey, does this website support Cyrillic??) :smile:
>>
>>MINIangelD


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well said, hapaboy. while we're talking about MINI salespeople/motoring advisors, it's interesting that only ONE of them actually owns and drives a MINI of his/her own. if each one of them drove one daily, i'm sure they'd encounter a handful of bugs themself.

story time: many many months before i purchased my MINI, i actually talked to one of the sales staff and it was funny that the person actually told me that he/she just ordered a MINI which was a bogus lie, now that i own a MINI and no more information. heh. funny.

>>Ask a MINI sales person for the stats on the # of bad cars. i'm sure you'll get an
honest answer...yeah right! as for consumer reports (i believe it was CR), i saw an issue at borders and the MINI got excellent ratings in performance and handling but got a big fat black dot for reliability. they even stated that they couldn't recommend the car based on the high number of problems reported. A first year car is expected to have some bugs, but the number of problems over the period that i had my car is inexcusable. i had to make numerous trips to the dealer and many times for the same problem over and over. and once one thing was fixed, another problem would arise. and don't even get me started on the auto trunk release that never worked from day one. hopefully 04 owners won't have as many problems. i'm not saying the MINI sucks. its just that coming from BMW, you would expect better build quality. the concept & design of the car is awesome. i still love the look of the MINI, its a neat little car. i would still have my MINI if it weren't for the numerous problems which caused me to loose confidence in the car.
>>

 

ohhh....story time???? Before i bought my car, someone who worked at the BMW/MINI once told me that i could use Regular Gas in my MINI.....so i did, and it started to ping, and I posted a thread on MCO, and I got teased, then i changed gas to Premium (or supreme or whatever it's called) and the pinging stopped. So, I took the advice of someone I trusted, only to make an *** out of myself on MCO.

But as for your experience, t.....it sounds like things wouldn't be so bad if you were getting better customer service. Since you've got 2 MCS's.....pitch one and keep the good one. Then you'll still have something fun to autox....you'll just have to share with baronious.

 

yeah, quality customer service would be nice.

baronious has the STi to auto-x :smile:


>>But as for your experience, t.....it sounds like things wouldn't be so bad if you were getting better customer service. Since you've got 2 MCS's.....pitch one and keep the good one. Then you'll still have something fun to autox....you'll just have to share with baronious.
>>
>>

 

ahhh...late night stories.

talking to aka before he left...he mentioned that he did order one a ds/not sure what roof color, but the mini/bmw lease guys screwed up his the timing. somehow they pushed his lease back to 01/04, which unfortunately would be far too late as he'd be in texas by then. so his car, with all his fave options, was sold. yeah, he admitted he was pretty...irritated.

i do keep asking the others sales staff when they're gonna buy their own mini. figure owning one yourself would speak volumes for their product's integrity. maybe they're waiting for all the early model's kinks to get worked out?

i cannot believe mini t's streak of luck. did you like crack a few mirrors, cross a couple black cats' paths and curse the mini gods multiple times, all in the same month? well, at least you got one good mcs for now. maybe a replacement mcs, pretty in pink?

i gotta agree with the customer service problems with those service people. got back my mcs a few days ago for some work and saw a few light scratches over on the driver's side. somehow the actual tech guys who work on our cars do not appear to share the same level of care that we owners have. they did do a good job it appears on the actual parts and labor, but just somehow fail to watch out for the other parts of the car.

but i later discovered they didn't follow the instructions entirely with the alta intake, forgetting to take out the divider that basically allows air to flow thru to the intake. so i had to take apart pretty much everthing intake-wise to fix the lack of air. once that was fixed, wow! huge difference in feel and sound, as i basically had no air earlier.

any more lemon stories? t, trade back your lemon for a mango or a apple-banana. mmm...getting hungry now.



_________________
kbs

 

>>i do keep asking the others sales staff when they're gonna buy their own mini. figure owning one yourself would speak volumes for their product's integrity. maybe they're waiting for all the early model's kinks to get worked out?

yeah, i wonder when, too....especially b/c i'm sure they could get a kick a$$ of a deal on one.

>>i cannot believe mini t's streak of luck. did you like crack a few mirrors, cross a couple black cats' paths and curse the mini gods multiple times, all in the same month? well, at least you got one good mcs for now. and a sti. and a 240. and what else? maybe a replacement mcs, pretty in pink?

uh, no. simply emptied out my pockets to buy a reliable car that i thought i would have absolutely no problems. heh.

>>i gotta agree with the customer service problems with those service people. got back my mcs a few days ago for some work and saw a few light scratches over on the driver's side. somehow the actual tech guys who work on our cars do not appear to share the same level of care that we owners have. they did do a good job it appears on the actual parts and labor, but just somehow fail to watch out for the other parts of the car.
>>
>>but i later discovered they didn't follow the instructions entirely with the alta intake, forgetting to take out the divider that basically allows air to flow thru to the intake. so i had to take apart pretty much everthing intake-wise to fix the lack of air. once that was fixed, wow! huge difference in feel and sound, as i basically had no air earlier.

you should let the service advisor and his/her team know of this b/c apparently, they're making way more mistakes then they should be.

 

Well, Randy has a MC and so does Darrel. As for Justin, he just loves his BMWs, just like me. I did ask Justin why he didn't get a MINI, and he said they do not get deals on the MINIs. They get good deals on the BMWs, but not the MINIs. Strange isn't it? The unfortunate part is there are no MINIs in stock so the poor motoring advisors can't sell any car and thus are not generating any income. :???: Whereas the BMW side of the house has cars in stock to sell and the salespersons are doing quite well.

Another interesting thing is the service advisors. If you look at that group, the only one that has been around a long time is Rhonda, but she isn't out front too often. Next would be Mike McDonald. After that, I think Jesse is the next senior guy. Tony and the other guys just started within the past 6 months.

Problem MCS'? Maybe it's the color? My DS had cooling problems and went through 3 or 4 of the coolant tanks. Hapaboy's MCS was DS as is mini-t's. Baronious' car is EB and it has no problems. Very interesting!

 

hey, the motoring advisors have a pretty good deal if they can score on the bmw side

hmmm, my guess is that even if all of them drove MINIs, wouldn't it be a conflict of interest for them to make public any problems/issues they've encountered?

maybe dark silver's were made on a monday? or 50% of MINIs were made on a monday? heh.

 

Is it possible to sell the MCS back to MINI? If so, how does that work? Do you think the amount MINI-HI would pay for it is reasonable?

 

It is possible to sell the car back to MINI as they are in a shortage of cars to sell. However, if she does, she'll probably take a loss of at least $3k. If she wants to get more $$$ she'll have to start the Lemon Law process.

 

mini-t,
Sorry to hear about your frustrating experiences. Study the requirements for the lemon law and if your MINI qualifies then do take action. I hope there is some smoother sailing for you in the future no matter what happens.

 

YIKERS! Even more problems with mom's Cooper CVT!

Since she refuses to drive the car anymore, I've been driving it ocassionally to see how it is running. Let's see, the car seems to yo-yo in stop and go traffic @ 10mph, and it pulls to the right! I drove a new CVT at MoH and it did not pull to the right. Instead, it tracked straight when flooring it. This must be some form of torque steer, but I don't feel it in the steering wheel. The strange thing is I had the same problem with my 5 spd Cooper. The MINI techs changed out the shocks and springs, re-aligned my old car and it still did that. This is beginning to scare me!

 

hi beastmaster, sorry that your MINI POOPER is still causing you problems! doesnt it qualify as a lemon already? i had alignment issues and pulling to one side too with my mcs...even the "new" mcs from the dealership i drove was pulling to one side. i mentioned it to the big kahuna.

i'm still praying for my car....

 

What about a Lotus Elise? JN had one on the track along with a Gallardo, Z06 and a RS6. That Lotus was sweet! Passed me at 100mph and it was quiet but driving a nice tight line. Of ourse Doc Bundy was driving!

It should be fairly reliable as it will have a Toyota engine for the US version. I believe the grey market ones have the Honda Vtec motors. Why didn't they use that instead of the Toyota!

 

hmmm, probably not an elise for me. but rumor has it that one of our very own mini owners is planning on an elise in the near future -- can we stand in line to test drive it?