i thought i convinced my dad on letting me sell my car, but i guess i did not. he feels i should not buy it becuase i will have to take out a loan for a few grand and then i will have to pay it off monthly. which he feels is going to add alot of stress to my life. but that is not the worst part. he just in general thinks minis are unreliably and will cost a fortune to fix once broke. becuase bmw has that type of reputation. but i am not sure about if mini is just owned my bmw of does bmw actually make minis. also since he has a few friends that are mechanics and they say they are bad cars and not to get them, he feels i should not. and i should just keep the car i have not until i get out of college and can get on later. but me, i dont knwo how long i can live without one. i think abotu them constantly,i am addicted to this website and addicted to dream of taking trips in my mini or shifting in it. maybe just sitting in it and doing home work becuase it wil feel liek home ot me. i do respect my dads opinion but i was just wondering if anyone have heard of these questions and maybe have advice or an answer. of insite on my delimma.

is mini just owned my bmw of does bmw actually make minis??

 

He's right about them costing a fortune to fix. I hit a $850 pothole a couple weeks before I sold the car. Paid for the service the day I handed it over to the new owner It wasn't even covered under warranty.

I messed up a clutch at about 20k miles ( My first manual, what can I say. I thought it was "cool" to sit at the light without my brakes on, using the engine to hold the car in place. I did it on a hill in traffic for about 10 minutes, found I had another 6 inches of play in the clutch I didn't have when I was at the bottom!) and BMW wanted $6000 to fix it.

MINI is owned by BMW, and is built by the British. The worst of both worlds!











Oh, and by the way - it's worth it

 

mini63, I recommend that you visit www.MINIUSA.com and read up on the MINI's history. Educate yourself by reading through the various technical threads and informational forums here on NAM. Also, learn where the "Shift" key is and use it, as posting text-style here on NAM is considered bad form. Welcome to NAM, and study up so you can feel confident about what a great car the MINI truly is.

 

I prefer to think of BMW being the "parent company" while MINI, in England, builds our Cooper and Cooper S'...
I'd never drive a "beemer". MINI, yes, beemer, NO.
OFF TO WORK I GO! In my MINI. :-)

 

There are some people who will, for whatever reason, never be convinced. You can either give yourself a headache trying to redeem the car in their eyes (my own preferred method, actually) or you can just nod and smile and feel inwardly sorry for the poor dears who will never understand the joys of MINI (usually what I resort to after chosen method doesn't work). Then, once you graduate, you can get the MINI and flaunt the hell out of it, making dear old dad obscenely jealous

 

BMW owns MINI and contributes many of the parts that are in MINIs. Just look at the brakes and many other parts - they say BMW. If you're around BMWs, you'll notice many many similarities that I will not take the time here to list.

The mini is a cheaper, FF, BMW. But the service bills won't be cheaper, and the reliability has been an issue for some, but not for all; and as the production run of these first models expires, it seems to only get better.

I really don't understand the argument that BMW owns mini, but MINI makes the car, so therefore it is not a BMW. BMW bought the company, put all of its production processes, materials, people, R&D, engineering, etc to produce the small BMW they would dub, "MINI". Yes it is made in England, but many BMWs are made in many different countries. Would you call the X5 or the Z4 american cars?

mb

 

Eegads... lets not flog the dead horse of "is it a BMW?" again...!

 

Dude, c'mon, now. Seriously. Of course it wasn't covered under warranty, and I can't believe you're still in disbelief about that! Do you expect them to repair your car under warranty if you run into a bridge?

Thank you, Clo. Maybe if we can convince j0ker of that, I can remove him from my block list. l33t 5p34k is so childish.

Of course not, because you don't drive "beemers" you ride them. "Bimmers" get driven. bimmer vs. beemer :-)

 

Educate yourself then maybe you can sell your Dad on the MINI mentality. Then get him in a test drive and see if that doesn't change his mind. They're not BMW they are MINI to the bone!!! Knowledge is power. Educate yourself!!!

 

If repair and maintenance costs are an issue, I'd steer clear of the '07s. First run of the new model is bound to have some nagging issues, and MINI can be terrible when it come to providing satisfaction - forcing people to turn to the aftermarket for solutions. The engine management software, for one, has been a constant battle, particularly for MCS owners. The factory windshields are a joke - some people have gone through a half dozen or more!

But like somebody said, it's all worth it (if you can afford it)!

 

I bought a lot of cars I should not have purchased when I was younger and they cost me a fortune to maintain. Somethings in life are better if you wait. I bought a Mini and immediately caught the mod bug. I am very happy I purchased this car later in life and can now afford to do any mod I want. My advice, listen to dad. When you are out of college and have a job and can truly afford to do whatever you want, buy the car you want. College will be no fun if you are always strapped for cash.

 

^^ +1 always buy the 2nd year release.

 

Bee Emm Dubya.
Not gonna do it.
;-)

 

If you're in College, then you're 18 or older. Sit down and explain to your Dad your reasoning and why you want the MINI. Take into account his input and follow each point with a couterpoint or explanation of your own.

My Dad pushed back on a car purchase when I was a similar age (beleive I was almost 20 at the time. It wasn't so much that he was dead set against but wanted me to think it through and take into account his input and put forth my argument for the vehicle. Something he also said was one of the main points of a college education . I did and we talked and my '89 GTI 16v was delivered a few weeks later.
Best of luck!
-Randy

 

Well about me having knowledge abotu minis. i do have as much as i can get without become a machanic of one. i have read evreything i can find.i do work at a mini shop ( the originals) part time for free rying to get as much insight as i can. but also i saw an article about MINI Coopers in Road and Track. and it was interesing to see how many people hated the way there MINI had problems, but loved there MINI when it worked..

 

whoah clo, thats a bit harsh. i thought that nam was a chill place where these things didnt matter. hey, shouldnt you have pushed the shift key in your username when you pushed the c key after you pushed the shift key and m, shift key and i, shift key and n, shift key and I, and before you pushed the l and o keys? get what i am saying?

oh man im really asking for it now.

 

If it were my kid, I'd consider this an opportunity. Kids should have a chance to be kids for a while, but they should also start learning to be adults before they already are. A small-size debt like that, and a part-time job to help pay it off, is a great way to ease into the world of adult responsibility. But every parent is different.

Reliability was a much bigger issue in the early years, which was to be expected. It was a brand new car design, there were bound to be some kinks. Recent years have shown a very solid increase in reliability, but you won't necessarily see that reflected in certain press publications (e.g. Consumer Reports) for a few years, because they're very conservative about waiting to get a lot of data before scoring a model year well on reliability. It has had some good press notices, though; for example, it topped the Strategic Vision "Total Value Index" scoring.

No question they have a reputation for being expensive to fix. But as far as reliability, they may not be the leading edge of the bell curve, but they're well inside it. The higher-end models that tend to be a bit overengineered (5 Series, 7 Series, X5) tend to fare worse on reliability than the more popular models (3 Series, MINI).

A mechanic's opinion of a car could mean a lot of different things. He might just mean it's a bad car to have to service, a bad car because it doesn't handle like his vintage Charger parked out back, a bad car because it's not the massive SUV everyone thinks they need to survive a crash nowadays, etc. Ask his mechanic friends what specifically they dislike about the car, and then you can take that into consideration. But "the mechanic said don't get it" might just mean the mechanic got pissed off while trying to follow a wiring diagram in the service manual.

Sorry, I got no rebuttal for this one. It's between you and your dad. If you do end up having to keep your current car, though, here are two consoling thoughts:

1) MINIs are popular, and it shows no signs of fading. There will still be new cars on the market when you're ready to get one.

2) If you really love the current version of the MINI, no worries. Many, many MINI owners are fanatical about caring for their vehicle. There are going to be some very well maintained used 1st-gen MINIs on the used market for years to come.

 

No its not. If you can't read what hes writing, how is anyone going to help him? Its only common good sense not to write in ALL CAPS or like slop. Everyone makes typos but not using I for "i" is not cool.

 

Excellent point! My Uncle is a mechanic and he was summarily apalled that my mother "allowed" me to buy a MINI (at 22... with my own money ) because it wasn't a Honda Civic -- which is what his son purchased as his first new car, and which he feels should be the first new car of everyone on the planet. He had no other reasons for thinking that the MINI was a bad purchase, and his opinion could not be swayed with explanations of my many varied reasons for buying one*. He still gets some twisted enjoyment hearing all the problems I've had with my (2003) MCS.

* example: At first he thought they were unsafe, so I gave him the rundown on crash tests, to which he responded: "You shouldn't buy a car based solely on the results it received in crash tests -- safety is only one consideration."

 

For all the young multi-taskers out there, I ask that when they cease their texting and post on this site, that they:

• make an effort to make their posts more legible by using the Shift key for capitalizing where appropriate,
• put some space between sentences,
• and even, gasp!, break separate thoughts into new paragraphs.

I spell my username "MINIclo" to make it easy for others to read....which is what I am requesting here.

The paddle of compassion is ready, MINITOR.....

 

I disagree, I read it just fine and obviously everyone else who responded did as well. Its cool with me, I'm not grading anyone's paper. If it were a NAM policy to always use proper gramar, puctuation, spelling, and other rules, then I would understand, but to my knowledge it is not (and if it is then I am putting a very large and smelly foot in my mouth). I just didnt think it was a very friendly way to greet a newbie and thought that I would give Clo a hard time about it (I often give Clo a hard time).

Back on track, someone help this person.

 

Ooo, gimme that paddle, I'm ready.

Didn't mean to offend anyone.

 

I guess it is now (or sort of).

 

I dont think that rules buried inside threads are official, otherwise I would be screwed. Can we get back on track now?

 

Sure, this one is kind of simple.

If you live under your parents roof OR your parents support you in one way or another, ultimately, its their way or the highway,

If you make your own living and are over 18, you do what you want (trying not to make hard feelings with the family).