Im curious to know how far away some Cooper owners are from their closest service centers. Many people live well over 100 miles from the nearest dealer so I am wondering if there are any people daring enough to have bought a Cooper while not being within a "practical" distance from warranty service. thanks for your responses!

Patrick

 

I live here in South Florida and have access to no less than 6 MINI dealers in a 75 mile radius.

My selling dealer is only 30 miles away, the second closest is about 10 miles and thethird closest is about 19 miles away.

 

mine is about 30 miles away too!

 

26 miles or so...

 

Round trip of 235 miles for service, but worth the minor inconvenience to deal with professionals.
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2003 Chili Red/White top and wheels MCS, black leather, anthracite dash, packages 2 & 3, DVD based Navigation w/OBC, PDC, HK, MFSW, rain sense wipers w/auto dim mirror. Ordered January 27, actual production date March 11, delivery date April 12 of 2003.

 

My selling dealer is about 10 miles away, and has given me excellent service thus far

 

I am in LA county. I have two within 15-20 miles, so far one of them is on my never go there again list. There are four more an hour or less drive away.

 

We live half way between San Francisco and LA. It's about a 3-3.5 hour drive to our dealer for service. Not exactly close. But the drive ain't all that bad in a MINI!!!

 

I live in Bend, Oregon and my dealer is Rasmussen MINI in Portland. Grand total, 170 miles. Easy drive in the summer, but the pass can be nasty in a MINI in the winter.

They're a great dealer though. Their service is second to none!

 

I drive past my closest dealer which is about 110 miles away to get to a good dealer at 210 miles from home. I bought the car from a dealer that was a little over 500 miles away.

None of this is "practical" but I bought and drive a MINI, if I wanted "pratical" I'd have bought a Toyota.

 

I live in Laurel, MS. Closest MINI dealer is in Baton Rouge, LA -- 200 miles away. Another excuse to motor!

 

20 or so miles.

 

I live in Newtown, Connecticut, about 40 miles north of the Darien Mini Dealer and 52 miles south of the Hartford Mini Dealer. Although Darien is closer by way of the crow, its faster and easier to get to the Hartford Dealership.
Which by the way did their JCW install today!
I am number three on the list so at this point I am now second in line at New Country Motors!

 

>>I live in Bend, Oregon and my dealer is Rasmussen MINI in Portland. Grand total, 170 miles. Easy drive in the summer, but the pass can be nasty in a MINI in the winter.
>>
>>They're a great dealer though. Their service is second to none!

Hey, JimmerO, another Rasmussen buyer here. I'm in Eugene, about 105 miles away from the Portland dealership. I also have no complaints whatsoever at this point, though if regular BMW dealerships were to be certified to pick up MINI service, I'd sure our local one a try!

 

The best thing is to be your own service center! I've done intakes, exhausts, sway bars, springs, accessories, etc. Next weekend Randy arrives to do the Texas Pulley Install! Can you get this enthusisam at the dealership? NOooooo! We've got rock music while Randy makes your MINIS rock, BBQ and a whole lot of MINI people mingling and having fun checkin'out the cars! Maybe we'll go drive the twisties afterwards!

Find a MINI-owner owned service center near you! We're in the Dallas metroplex. http://www.alltuneandlube1.homestead.com

Graham

 

Hey, thanks for the replies everyone! I would still love to hear from more of you. But another question on this subject: what do you do if you live 100+ miles from a dealer and have a breakdown?!? this is whats worrying me right now. Everyone I talk to says not to buy a car that you cant get service on in your local area. I am about 130 miles from Pittsburgh, 180 from philadelphia. its actually about the same driving time to each, though, as the roads into pittsburgh are slow and twisty (great for a MINI) from here (state college, pa, home of Penn State).

thanks again for this additional input.

Patrick

 

As I understand it (I'm a future MINI owner) you would call roadside assistance and they would send a flatbed to transport your car to the nearest MINI dealer. Once there, they would help you arrange a rental car because I don't think they have to provide a loaner.

I'm 100 miles from San Antonio - I live in Austin,Texas. and I know that before the San Antonio dealer opened the MINI owners in Austin used the service depts in Dallas or Houston. I'm feeling really confident in MINI because I've heard of so many Mini owners in Austin and only ONE that's had to have the car taken to the dealer.

 

I'm lucky that I'm only about 20 miles from my service dept. considering there is only one in the whole state of Colorado.

 

I'm about 180 miles from my dealer, but my desicion to buy was made a little easier by the fact that I have to travel on business 2 - 3 times a year to an office less than 5 minutes from the dealership, and my mother-in-law lives about 15 minutes away.

Breakdowns are covered by roadside assistance for the first three years and they do a good job using only approved haulers who have been trained to handle our babies ! Service intervals are large, the first at 10,000 miles, and regular service is free for the first 3yrs/36,000 miles.

All things considered, the risks of being this far removed from a local dealership
seemed fairly minimal, plus the opportunity to motor for 2 hours to get service is more fun than drugery !

 

I'm approx. 4hrs (est. 500km's- Canadian eh) away from my nearest dealer. It was a risk I didn't mind taking. This car rocks. I couldn't see myself settling with something else just to have a servicing center close to home. The coverage is exceptional with MINI/BMW. Like said, MINI foots the bill for a flatbed to haul your MINI away. The last visit to my dealer I also found out that MINI will also reimburse me up to $500 (CDN) for any expenses along the way if I'm stranded. Now that's pretty cool. It'll still be an inconvenience to have the car hauled away a long distance. But when it's not broken, it's just so damn much fun to drive. So that overrides the risk of car failure on the road. My MCS is still going strong at over 17,000km's.
Cheers,

 

180 miles, 3 hours to Mini of Pittsburgh from State College PA. Last trip I made it into the 110mph club. 120 next time

 

THats where Im from! Now Maybe I have seen you driving before... Well if I've read right, and you are from state college, that totally eases my worries about buying a MINI. fantastic!

 

I'm close, 25 miles and about 30 minutes with no traffic and about 60 minutes in rush hour.
But we have only one dealer for the state and no other dealers in any direction (US or international) for about 3600+ miles in ANY direction.
On the outer islands like the big island of Hawaii they are some 300+ miles away and reachable by barge- takes about a week's travel each way. Now that would be significant if my car had repeated warranty work issues.

 

I think I am the luckiest one here. I have 2 dealerships within 8 miles of home, and there are 6 dealerships within 26 miles! I'll leave you seasoned Mini owners guess where that is.

 

I'm in the middle of IL in Springfield which has a BMW dealer. I shopped in St Louis (100 m/o/w) and Schaumburg (200 m/o/w) and bought from the latter because the sales staff was great in comparison. I'm also 200 m from Indy.

Patrick MINI has Sat hours and my spouse works north of there during the week so driving to Chicagoland is no big deal for us.

MINI JoeGreen now has 9200 miles, just had his first maintenance service, and other than one yellow light for serv eng soon visit for diagnosis, I've had absolutely no problems. Couldn't be happier and wouldn't drive anything else.

I called the local BMW when I heard an e-rumor about BMW techs being trained at non-MINI dealerships so the service could be distributed better. He said they weren't interested .. in that 'we don't want those cheap cars here' tone. (They also sell Porsche and MB.)

In the old days we used to take our Volvos 100 miles o/w for service so we're used to buying/servicing out of town. And, we don't go to the closest for convenience unless they happen to also be the best.

Tomorrow is Indy F1 Fan Day for us!! Motor ON!!!!!!