ITS FRICKIN' AWESOME!!!!! Picked up my all black MCSC automatic with the chrome package last night. I have been too busy driving it every second I get to take any pictures. So far I have had to make my way through the crowds to actually get to my car after I park it any any public place with the top down! I'm talking about typically 10 people standing around it if I leave it for any more than 15-20 minutes.

As far as the automatic is concerned, I originally had a manual on order and gave it up 3 months ago when it was on the ship to Charleston. My wife and I nearly got in a divorce over the fact that she wanted to be able to drive it too (she has tried to learn on my past 2 manual cars without anything close to success). I was also afraid she might wreck the MINI trying to learn on it. Anyway, the automatic is VERY fun and now that I have it I have to say I love it. I have been driving it in sport mode and using the paddles to shift most of the time, but do put it into sport automatic mode when I get tired of shifting or in traffic. The sport auto mode holds the gears exactly like how you would want it to with a manual and even downshifts abruply like letting the clutch out quickly for your down shift. It holds gears in corners, etc... In some ways it works much better than I ever did in any of my manual cars in terms of gear selection. I can assure you that this transmission does not take any of the sporting character of the car away at all. Kudos to MINI for coming up with such an amazing transmission.

 

Nice. Glad that your enjoying the new auto. I got a chance to drive it to and its really awesome.

 

i want an automatic now...

 

I hurt my knee shortly after trading my 03 in for a RX-8. I find myself wanting to dump it, and join the auto MCS crowd !!!

Congrats on the new ride.

 

I wish I had an extra $100k, because there are no less than 4 variations I MUST HAVE of the mini! It really sucked narrowing it down to one. A vert auto is one of my combos!

 

I called my MA today, Josh Buckingham at MINI of Nashville--Great guy, highly recommend him (as have others)--to thank him and inform him that only 3 things could every separate me from this car..

1. If it gets stolen
2. If it gets totalled
3. If someone offered to pay me twice what I payed for it (in which case, I would use the extra money to buy TWO new ones--one for me and one for my wife)

If anyone is interested in a learning some of the finer details about the 4 different shifting modes in the automatic, check out my latest description in the "February build" thread.