A couple weeks ago I picked up my second Mini Cooper. First was a 2010 R56 Laurel Special Edition but it was sold last October. This one is an ‘05 with 162xxx miles. Picked this one up pretty close to where I bought my first one. This one came with a bunch of tasty mods too.

-15% pulley
-RMW Street Cam
-RMW Shorty Header
-Scorpion exhaust
-450 cc injectors
-Tune by RMW

The car makes 220 whp so I think I picked up a car with good roots. The guy took amazing care of the car. All maintenance was record kept and I have a file 1” thick with receipts. No rust under the body or in the quarter panels either.




Look for me in the mods section once I start picking up some goodies.

 

Nice!!! Picked mine up unmolested minus DDM cold air with 124k and have been smiling ever since.

 

Congrats! She looks great! I myself just picked up a R53 too.

So which do you like better? The R53 or R56?

 

Nice! Now did you get this car to match the color of your house

 

R53 hands down. Way more fun to wind up and go. Handling is about the same but less creature comforts in this car makes it more easy to enjoy in my opinion.

Whenever I drove my R56 I was afraid that the car would break down at any moment. I feel wayyy more comfortable driving this one around.

 

That’s great news to R53 owners!

Why do you say that about the R56? Are they not reliable? What issues do they have?

 

Looks great, congrats! I love these little cars, so much driving fun for so little money!

 

Where do I even start.

Before 70k miles the high pressure fuel pump failed.
Thermostat cracked under 80k.
The coolant expansion tank cracked.
The car would burn a ridiculous amount of oil.
The torque steer was about 3 times worse than the R53.
2 valve covers leaked within 30k of replacing each.

All this from 60k-112k miles.

The reliability wasn’t there. Like I said, every time I drove it I didn’t know if it was going to break on me. The R53 just feels better already.

 

Beautiful! Congrats