Year: 2008
Make: MINI
Model: Hardtop
Price: $8500
Mileage: 81000
Color: Grey
Private or Dealer Listing: Private Listing
Location (Region): Canada

SOLD


Image courtesy GotCone.com; I've paid him for a full res version, but he hasn't yet had a chance to send it to me.

I’m selling my 2008 Mini Cooper S, fully prepped for D Street autocross. It’s a bit scruffy aesthetically, but to quote Han Solo, “she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts”. I’ve priced it with its aesthetic condition in mind, so you’d be hard pressed to find a car that’s fully prepped for any class for less money. The car was built for, and is still a dark horse in, national-level autocross competition; with the right driver it’s also capable of taking top spot at almost any regional event.

The car’s a stripper, and thus pretty optimal for autocross or track work. The only significant options are the factory limited-slip differential, Xenon headlights, and cruise control. It doesn’t have a sunroof; it took me a long time to find a car that had the LSD but no sunroof. The car has 81k miles / 130k km on it; that will go up over time as I drive it to autocrosses and sometimes daily drive it.

Autocross parts currently installed on the car:

• Koni Sport shorts converted to double-adjustable by TC Kline. Normally you need to take the rear shocks off of the car to adjust them, but I had extensions made that allow adjustment without removing the shocks first. Bought new in March for $2514 (maybe a touch less, since I think that price included shipping).
  
  
• John Cooper Works Tuning Kit. Adds 17 hp and 8 lb. ft., bringing the total up to 189 hp and 185 lb. ft., which according to my calculations should make the car about as fast as a WRX in a straight line. The kit consists of an exhaust that sounds pretty good, a revised air intake, and an ECU tune. Bought new in February; costs $1720 new plus labor, since the tune’s only installable by a dealer: http://www.shopminiusa.com/PRODUCT/2...RKS-TUNING-KIT
  
  
• John Cooper Works springs and front sway bar. Stiffer than stock, lowers the car by 10 mm. Bought new in February for $570. http://www.shopminiusa.com/PRODUCT/2...ORT-SUSPENSION
  
  
• Hotchkis Sport Suspension Competition Rear Anti-Roll Bar. The stiffest off-the-shelf rear bar I could find: 25 mm hollow with 3 adjustment holes. Bought new in February for $264. http://www.tirerack.com/suspension/s...odClar=Hardtop
  
  
• 2 sets of 16” x 7” Rota Slipstream wheels (8 wheels total) machined down to a DS-legal 41.2 mm offset. One set bought new this year, three of which are in very good shape and one of which has some mild aesthetic damage on the face. The other four have some curbing, gouges, and paint chips on them, but they’re still straight and true. Cheapest price I could find new for these wheels was $140 each ($1120 total) on eBay, plus I paid $150 per set ($300 total) to adjust the offset.
  
  
• 1 set of really ugly, beat up mystery wheels that aren’t legal for DS due to offset.
  
  
• Tons of tires:
• 2 225/50R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 6.5/32” of tread left
• 2 225/50R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 2/32” of tread left
• 2 205/50R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 5.5/32” of tread left
• 2 195/55R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 7/32” of tread left
• 4 205/55R16 ExtremeContact DWs with 9/32” of tread left
• 3 random all-season tires with some tread left
• 3 random snow tires with some tread left

The car had a clean Carproof report (Canadian equivalent of Carfax) when I bought it in January, and I haven’t run into anything since. :-) I’m pretty picky when it comes to cars, so I poured a ton of money into maintenance after buying it, culminating in installing a refurbished turbo in July.

I consider the car a “10 foot car”. From ten feet away it looks pretty good, but if you start looking closely it’s not very pretty. I got caught in a hailstorm driving home from an autocross in August (pro tip: stay away from Alberta, Canada), and as a result there’s a fairly deep dent on the roof and a bunch of smaller ones on the roof, hood, and the tops of the fenders. The previous owner had a big Joker decal on the roof which left some residue behind when I removed it. There were some chips down to the bare metal on the leading edge of the roof when I bought the car, so I removed the surface rust from them (including chipping off the surrounding paint so that I could get at any rust there) and touched them up, but didn’t get around to sanding down the paint blobs. The residue and touchup paint blobs could probably be addressed in a few hours with a rotary sander; that was my original plan and I may still get to it if I have a slow day sometime soon. There’s a tear about 6” long and 0.25” tall in the tint on the rear window, and a scratched area about 2” square in the tint of the left rear window. There are small cracks in the perforated vinyl of the driver’s seat, and in one 3” long section a few bits of the vinyl have flaked off.

TL;DR: None of this interferes with the functioning of the car at all, but you’re not going to win a concours in it.

The car current lives and is registered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, about 160 miles north of the Montana border. It’s a Canadian market car and I haven’t investigated what would be involved in importing it into the States, but it’s apparently pretty straightforward.

The KBB value of the car is $6700, and I put $6488 worth of autocross parts on it, not counting the tires, turbo, or other maintenance items. I’m willing to let it go with all of the parts listed above, as well as the stock parts they replaced, for $8500 USD / $11135 CAD plus whatever it would cost to ship whichever parts didn’t fit in the car.

Two other alternatives:

• I’m not expecting the car to sell as-is, so I plan to part it out in a few months. I don’t want to start that process until the car’s been on the market for a few weeks, but if someone who already has a Mini is interested in buying a significant portion of all of the parts, then I’d be willing to entertain selling them as a package. I’d be willing to include the reflashed ECU as part of a parts deal as long as I got a stock ECU back in exchange.
  
  
• I’d be willing to entertain trades for sporty RWD cars in the same price range, including but not necessarily limited to:
• Hyundai Genesis Coupe
• Infiniti G35
• Mazda Miata (any generation)
• Mazda RX-8
• Nissan 350Z
• Toyota MR2 (3rd generation)

I haven’t yet taken any photos of the car since I’m not really expecting anyone to bite on this, but if you’re interested let me know and I’ll take some pics. I don’t get PM notifications here, but I can be reached at [my first name][my last name]@live.com without the square brackets (my name’s in my signature at the bottom of this post).

Thanks!

 

Is this car still available?

 

Sure is! Please shoot me a mail at [my first name][my last name]@live.com (my name's in my signature file at the end of this post) if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Steve