I previously had 04 Justa in 5-speed and it had its share of issues but one thing is for sure....it was an absolute blast to drive. I'm a car fanatic having owned and sold 35 different cars and counting but there really isnt anything out there like a cooper.

Can any of you Cooper connoisseurs recommend a year/model doesnt matter what trasmission thats most reliable? Thanks in advance!

 

06 R53 6 speed.

 

02-06 MINI Cooper S 6 speed manual trans are the most reliable, they changed ratios in 05, but they are reliable.

 

02-06 MCS 6 speed. The 05/06 isn't any more reliable, they just got rid of some squeaks and rattles. I've owned an 05s and an 02s. The 02 is now my DD with 255whp of RMW love.

 

So you guys recommend the S over the Justa? Even in terms of reliability?

 

I would think an 05-06 manual justa would be even more reliable than its S counterpart. They got rid of the midlands transmission and replaced with a getrag 5-speed. Since its NA, less heat and stress on engine internals.

 

The 2014 Consumer Reports Annual Buying Guide indicates the most reliable are the 2008, 2010-2012 non-S Coopers with "average". 2007 and 2009 are ""worse than average". All S version Coopers from 2007-2011 are listed as "much worse than average" (2012 is "average"). Their charts don't go back beyond 2007.

 

In terms of the Gen 1 MINIs, the R53 6-speed Getrag is the most reliable.
The R50 Getrag and the R53 Auto are good bets.
The R50 Midlands is not terribly reliable, although mine is still doing ok at 77K and 11 years.
The R50 CVT is the least reliable.

I believe all the Gen 2 transmissions are pretty reliable.

 

I don't give a rats *** what CR says. Most people have no idea what reliable is... If it has ANY issue, it's marked as a reliability issue.

Reliability and trouble free are two completely different things. My then 3 year old MG Midget was NOT reliable. I had to carry spare parts and tools in the trunk all the time, because I was NEVER sure it would get me where I was going.

I you are really that concerned with a car being reliable, buy a new vehicle with a warranty, and a loaner program. At least that way, you have 4 years of free fixes if it does somehow manage to strand you somewhere. (which is highly unlikely with modern cars.)

 

Yes this is the one. I was told by the service manager at the local dealer that the 2006 MCS was the one to have. Guess he should know.

 

Well, strictly reliability?, I suppose so.

MPG no.

In terms of what mechanically goes wrong with minis, S and non-S, are usually common to both cars like the power steering pump (as far as I know).

Yes, the S has a supercharger and belt which can go 'bad' or need more maintenance (belts), but it's really not that big of an issue.

I've had my mini for 10 years and 195k. I've changed the clutch, power steering pump, and supercharger. That's about 3-4 thou right there.

Maybe somebody can chime in on an equivalent justa.

 

Is the 02-06 still the most reliable?

Looking to buy a commuter car. I am a mechanic by b trade but still want the most reliable.
Just because i can fix it doesn't mean i want to.

So if buying a cheap mini for mpg should i stick with 02-06?

2011 better?

 

05-06 R53, they fixed some of the early issues, better ecu/tune lots of little fixes like added a 2nd hood sensor in case it only latches on one side.

 

Another purchase factor would be total cost of ownership. In this you could include the inconvenience of car downtime.

If you are a mechanic, you could do preventive maintenance & repairs economically to minimize downtime. An older car is going to need more parts replaced, & some of them can be high priced.

So the big factor is what you have to pay to purchase a car, how much time & money you want to spend fixing it, what you can sell it for later.

Also, insurance cost can change with older car too.

 

The 05 and 06 cars are the most reliable . Just avoid the R50 with the CVT at all costs as they were horrifyingly unreliable. The best transmission is the 6 speed in the Cooper S and many people swap to them. The 5 speed Midlands was just a bad design that is not able to keep up with the demands of the R50 and was originally designed for a much lighter and less powerful Rover model. The ring gear is press fit on the differential and eventually slips, rendering the transmission useless. The Getrag 5 speed is better, but is not without it's issues. The issues with the Getrag 5 speed are that the differential bearings fail and the reverse idler gear bushing fails and can take out both gear clusters when it does so. When I took my Getrag 5 speed apart, the reverse idler gear bushing was worn and one of the differential bearings had an inner race that was not fully machined and the rollers were pitted as a result. Want parts? Want repair procedures? Don't ask BMW because they don't sell trans parts and insist on selling you a complete new transmission- for $3000-4000. You can get parts for these two problems off eBay, and a bearing and seal kit is $110, while the reverse idler gear and bushing assembly is $120. However, the gear they sell you is not machined properly and will be noisy so you are probably better off pressing out the bushing from the new gear and putting it in the old one (I will be trying this in the upcoming third revision of my Getrag.) If you need syncronizer parts then you are out of luck as no one makes them and you will need to find used parts.

As far as the rest of the car goes, yes the 05-06 cars are better here as well. BMW finally fixed the water intrusion issue that would kill the BCM in the passenger's footwell in these later cars and implemented other running changes to the cars as well for better reliability. The R50 will have the more reliable engine than the R53, and that is down to complexity. The supercharger adds another possible failure point both in terms of complexity and how the cars are driven. We would like to think that anyone who owns a MINI is an enthusiast that cares for their car but most are not. Most people ignore expensive maintenance items on older cars and run them into the ground. In a car with a performance engine that can lead to big problems when you go to sort it. A MINI is not a Corolla and does not thrive on neglect like the Toyota. (Nothing against Toyota, BTW, their engineering is next level when it comes to appliances.) What I tell people on my YouTube channel is that it is a car that is best left to a mechanically inclined enthusiast because paying shop labor for all that will be wrong on a 15-20 year old BMW product is financial suicide. If you do buy one, be prepared to service the supercharger when you get it home unless you have receipts telling you that it was done. While you're in there, throw in a new belt, front crank seal, crank angle sensor O ring with one made from Viton, water pump, and hoses and replace the power steering fluid and clean the power steering pump fan.

Remember too that a cheap MINI isn't always cheap. Many times you will be money ahead buying a better car with plenty of service history and lower miles, unless that cheap MINI is REALLY cheap! I would also avoid rust buckets and rebuilt wrecks because the book value of these cars isn't high enough to justify the repairs. A $500 car needing body and paint work can easily cost another $3-5k in the body shop and then you still have to sort the car's other issues. A good car in a road salt free state is maybe $2500-5k, so you aren't saving anything.

 

My daughter bought a 2003 R50 5-speed in 2008 with 40,000 miles on it and owned it for 5 years. The only thing that went wrong in those 5 years was a leaky radiator that cost her $600 to replace. I bought it in 2013 with 84,000 miles and had numerous issues. I never owned a less reliable car in my 40+ years of driving. In 6 years I put another 30,000 miles on it, and spent over $10,000 in repairs! Here's a list of stuff I fixed or replaced (some of it is normal maintenance I admit, but even that is expensive with this car):

• brake pads, rotor, and fluid $550
• belt tensioner $250
• rear hatch hinges $400
• exhaust and upstream O2 sensor $1100
• clutch kit $1500
• emergency brake cables $550
• water pump and drive belt $1000
• wheel bearings $700
• steering shaft lower section $900
• remanufactured cylinder head $2500
• front axle and motor mount $1000
• downstream O2 sensor $150
• control arm bushings $550

So, at first the R50 was reliable, but time and mileage changed that. I sold it for $2000 at 115,000 miles. Maybe I could have gotten another $500. Everything was fixed at that point - except the bottom of the driver door was rusting out, but I just wanted to be done with its problems.

I bought a 2015 F56 and am hoping that is a different story as far as reliability.

 

Holy crap! Labor must cost a lot of money. I could never afford to spend that kind of money maintaining a car.

 

Yep. MINI dealership labor prices are the highest so I avoided those, but for the first few years I did bring it to a highly recommended MINI specialist which was still quite expensive. As the problems started to mount, I went elsewhere. For example, the clutch replacement at $1500 was done at a local shop that worked on all kinds of cars.

The 2003 was early in the 1st generation cycle, so it had its own particular issues that were fixed in subsequent years. The bottom of the door rusting out is just one of the common issues. Plus the car was 16 years old when I sold it. The disappointing part is that these problems all happened prior to 115K miles. Hondas and Toyotas go a lot longer than that with much fewer problems.

That said, the R50 has its charms for sure. I hated the cost of maintenance and repair, but loved the car. And other people love it too. I posted it on Craigslist and within 2 hours I had a dozen replies. The car was sold in less than a day.

I loved it so much that I bought a 2015 F56 in the same color. Some of my co-workers didn't notice it was a different car when I drove it to work. Consumer Reports listed the 2015 reliability as very good across the board, so I'm crossing my fingers that this one will be trouble-free. After a month of owning the F56, I do love it as much as the R50, but for some different reasons. The 2015 is much closer to a luxury car - the Lounge Leather seats are the same materials as in my BMW M235i, the dash top material is the same, the iDrive and navigation system is the same, the climate control system is the same, and the modular turbo B38 engine is the same (although 1/2 the displacement). The biggest difference between the '03 R50 and '15 F56 besides the quality and modernization is the size and feel of the car. The R50 was tiny while the F56 is just small. The R50 always felt like it was going faster than it was because of the tiny size and high RPMs. The F56 is the opposite and feels like it's not going as fast as it actually is.

 

I agree that the R50 has it's charms but is terrifying to rely on due to the potential costs! I bought mine "pre-broken" with 83k on it and over $4,000 in receipts from the last 10k miles for $1900. I then proceeded to spend over $1,200 in parts to get it right again, and probably have another $1,000 to go. I could never afford to own one if I was not capable of doing all of the repairs myself. I just forget sometimes how much other people spend on maintaining and repairing their cars since I have been poor so long that I have adapted to it and found ways to get things done on a shoestring budget. I almost never pay for labor but rather trade my time and skill for that of someone else if it is something I can't do, like home HVAC. When I first got my R50, I planned to sell my car payment Toyota and replace it with the MINI, but decided it would be cheaper to just split driving duties with the known quantity Toyota being used for the commute, and the MINI being used around town and on my days off. I just don't feel that a 15 year olf MINI can be trusted to work well enough to rely on it. With the MINI, I need to rely on the spotty junkyard parts situation at the local u pull it lots to get parts for cheap, so if it breaks down I could be stuck buying expensive parts at full retail, and I don't make enough to do that.

For those who want to know, I have replaced:
Rebuilt transmission (DIY)
clutch
rear main seal
oil filter adapter seal
fuel filter
1 inner ball joint
front struts
front strut mounts
front bump stops
hood struts
headlights
power steering hoses
crank angle sensor O ring
spark plugs
oil and filter
cleaned throttle body
HVAC controls
radio
turn signal switch
blend air door actuator
front speakers
driver's side window regulator and motor
one tail light
hydraulic motor mount
4 brake rotors
4 wheels worth of brake pads
front sway bar end links
wipers front and rear
MINI specific blue coolant
Pentosin CHF power steering fluid
Redline MTL trans oil

Done in the 10k miles before I bought it:
Power steering pump
power steering pump fan
valve cover
drive belt
starter
battery
belt tensioner
coolant reservoir
air filter
cabin air filter
Tires (have 5k miles on them and are 5 years old and dry rotted!)
Other stuff I have forgotten


Still to come:
Headliner
rear shocks and bump stops
transmission back out (3rd time's the charm!)
Clutch again- it chatters on takeup, so I am going to get another one while I have the trans out
4 tires

Most of the work was done before I started driving it as the clutch was VERY wasted when I bought it and so I just did most of it when it was in service mode. As for my Toyota... It has 109,000 on it and is original except for the A/C compressor and tires. It was bought new to deliver pizza in 2015. Not even the brake pads have been changed.

 

Thanks for the detailed responses.
I was hoping to pick up a newer version like a 2014 or newer but read some bad things.
Seems like they would have this car lined out by now.

If i can find an 05-06 really cheap i might pick one up for fun but not as a commuter car.

 

I agree. Mine was originally going to be a fun commuter car to get me out of the Toyota payment but I have since thought otherwise. European cars in general are very expensive to run and unreliable. Sadly, BMW seems to think it's parts are worth their weight in gold and so their vehicles can be quite expensive to fix. In some cases, a MINI costs more than a 3 series to buy parts for. It's a fun DIY car if you have good junkyard support but I would never buy a new one.

 

I have not found mini to be any more expensive to drive than any of my Toyota or Ford's. Labor is higher on euro cars but parts are not and BMW does a much better job keeping old parts around 30+ years