Well I've been careful for 5 weeks, avoiding all dips and steep driveways...then today backing into a driveway, I scraped my front end on the dip for the first time. It was like nails on a chalkboard. I guess it's bound to happen, but it did hurt.

 

Don't feel bad. Within the first month, I did that *and* snuggled up to the curb when parking at work. A lifetime of driving Jeeps and trucks gives you bad habits. I'm so used to nudging the curb with the front tires, I forgot and used the air dam instead.

 

There is a bit of plastic trim hanging down under the front bumper, and I am sure you just scraped that and not anything visible.

Mine looks like it has been shredded but I haven't dinged up anything visible so far when I scrape against driveway entrances and such

 

Yes - the plastic hanging down under front bumper is easy to scrape... I recently removed front bumper to install some new horns - but while I was doing the install I did clean and take fine grade sandpaper and work it along that edge to remove any jagged edges and also smoothed it a bit - I did not use it on the flat surface at all because that is textured, but only on edge - it was amazing how much better it looked - you could do it with it installed on MINI as well.

 

All the BMW sedans also have super-low front spoilers for better aerodynamics. Nothing like seeing a 7-series scrape coming out of a driveway. Fortunately the part is always black to hide damage and easily replaced too. Makes me wonder why people would extend it even lower: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=47515

 

Yeah, No kidding why spend 500 dollars on a spoiler that I am sure will be destroyed within 6 months of daily driving. Maybe if it is only a track car or show car I can understand

 

I sold a Chevy truck to get the MINI....I'm not used to any scraping or curb-bumping. Just another thing to get used to I guess

 

The beauty of my MCS is being able to back into my parking spot with the tires resting comfortably against the curb. The rear pipes are nicely clear of it too.

 

got that one beat ...

20 minutes after installling new wheels ... curbed one of them ... man ... was that scraping sound music to my ears

 

The front bumper's plastic skirt or valence cost like $20-30 (that was what the body shop listed as it's parts price was when we had a bumper repaired last year on a '05 MCS), so I figure, scrape away, it's a cheap fix to replace the thing.

Kind of a nice feature actually.

Dave

 

The second day after going from my 4x4 to the MINI I scraped the first road-kill with that skirt. I went over it like I was in my truck instead of the MINI. Oops! Fortunately the racoon was thoroughly dried out and didn't stick.

Steve

 

Yes I did the same thing on my 3rd day of owning my MCS, I looked at it yesterday, can't even tell anything happened. I used to own an SVT Contour and scraped the hell out of the low hanging front bumper (it was painted), the Mini's front bumper has that urethane stuff that is pretty resilient compared to my old SVT.

Plus like DaveC said, it's cheap to replace . Or just make sure you take steep inclines at an angle.

 

I put a nick in mine in the first week.

I have since parked well back from curbs.

 

I find that going over curbs and bumps at a high rate of speed will take that stupid plastic overhang right off