CR publishes a chart that year-by-year shows whether a car is above or below average in ten or so major reliability areas (e.g., engine, body, trim, electrical, cooling, etc.). They don't report what has been failing, just whether the car has had fewer or more than the average number of repairs for cars of this age in general. This is compiled statistical data - they send out a lengthly questionaire to their subscribe base and ask people to report whether they've had their car repaired in these major areas. They crunch the numbers statistically and publish the results.

The "general knowledge" you refer to is more-or-less what people have been saying on forums like this but nobody has any data to back it up. It makes some sense - the longer a car has been in production without major changes, the more reliable it tends to me. And Mini made some substantial changes between the 04's and 05's. (There were a lot of changes between 03 and 04 too though.) That being said, CR's data doesn't bear this "general knowledge" out.... their survey data show 04's break down slightly less often than the 05's and 06's. Why? Hard to say. Perhaps Mini has some labor strife in the later years. Perhaps they cut some costs and QA/QC suffered. Perhaps some of the improvements in the 05 actually regressed and were less reliable than previous years (e.g., the 05 cars have shorter gearing so the engine, in general, revs a bit more).

I doubt the difference is enough for someone to prefer the 04's on reliability grounds. But, by the same token, I don't think it makes much sense to avoid the 04's in favor of the 05's and 06's for this reason either. And if you're really sensitive to reliability issues, I'd suggest a different car to begin with - no matter what the year, Mini's are average to below average overall on reliability compared to other cars.

- Mark

 

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