It's already sold. I have the VIN, would it have been possible to call up a dealer and have them run the VIN and tell me if it was legit? To give some additional information, it was a one owner 2005 with right at 100k miles, no accidents, etc....(according to carfax). Priced at $5k. I hear and appreciate what everyone was saying, which is why I had asked the questions. My other thought was someone would have spent a little bit of time and $$ in order to not actually try and profit off of the JCW pedigree or really push it. Assuming it wasn't a complete lemon, that seems to be a fair value on a plain jane MCS with 100k based on all the cars I've been looking at lately. I would have probably tried to talk him down a little bit from there.

 

Yep, that can pull its up also. If they kit was added outside or later on , then it comes up as a Cooper S

 

Kind of a necro quote, but I guess that explains why my dad's '02 MC with ~180,000 miles feels so much stiffer than my Sept. build '03 MCS with ~78,000.

 

You can enter the last 7 of VIN in the BMW VIN Decoder to get the build specifications.

If the car was built prior to November 2005 the kit would have been dealer installed. If the tuning kit was factory installed it would have been part of the JCW Package (option 3AL on the build spec) which also included a LSD (option 2TA on the build spec) and JCW Sport Brakes (red calipers and front discs which were 294mm instead of the stock 276mm). I'm not sure if MINI had a tracking system for dealer installed tuning kits.

When the 200bhp JCW kits came out in April 2003 they listed for $4,500. Adding the cost of the 10+ hours to install you're were looking at a $6K investment.

You can use the What's My Car Worth feature of KBB to see how the JCW kit effects the value.

For my 2002 MCS with 65K on the clock the kit added $1,634 in value.

 

I just dug our order sheet for our '06 R53 (not JCW) out of the file cabinet. We ordered the "Sport Package" and it included: Dynamic Stability Control, Front Fog Lamps, Xenon Headlamps w/Power Wash, 17" S-Lites. We opted out of the stripes. We also ordered the LSD and a few creature comfort/luxury items.

While not having specific opinions on the merits of a JCW, I recommend looking for a 2006 S with the sport package and LSD. I would think that a JCW is much more likely to have been driven very hard/abused.

Ditch the 17" S-Lites as they are ridiculously heavy and ride very rough/stiff with runflats. We usually run ours on 16" wheels with all-seasons and get everything we need out of it. (We're enthusiastic drivers but adult in our driving habits.) Frankly, you're looking for a car being sold by someone like me, but ours is not for sale.....

Good luck.