I am thinking it would be fun to drive a MCS auto. Any thoughts?

 

Heck yah Mine is almost a year old and a blast to drive.

 

Stomp and go - just the way I like it!

 

It's a lot of fun. I had an '05 BRG/W MCSa for about 9 mos. before I traded it in for my '06 JCW. However, slamming through the twisties using the paddle shifters is a blast and, of course, very simple to do. Also, when I got mine, the MCSa was still relatively new so there weren't too many people out there modding them yet. However, now it looks like there's a lot of good experiences out there with pulley upgrades, exhausts, etc. I haven't read anything about reliability problems, etc.

 

Great car, specially for congested South Florida driving. You may lose a bit of acceleration in "Normal" vs the manual transmission model and your fuel consumption will be higher, just because you have a hydrualically operated 6-speed AISIN slushbox with a torque converter.

Test drive it before you buy. I still prefer the manual transmission over the automatic, but for convenience, an auto is sometimes hard to beat.

 

Most of the initial software issues with the MCSa appeared to have been corrected. In the beginning were problems with the Check Engine light triggering by itself all the time.

 

I second that statement - it really IS a blast to drive. The auto has 3 modes - D, SD (faster upshifts, and upshifts occur higher on the rev band) and M (for you to shift with either the paddles or the stick). It is a great little gokart.

 

I enjoy my MCSa a lot. I first got it because my wife won't drive stick so I figured that would still let me get a little bit of the stick fun also. It is also better when you're setting in DC traffic becuase you don't have to worry about the clutch. Just my thought.

 

I test drove one when my wife and I were looking at used MINI's. We didn't get it. She wanted an auto, but hated the way that one was. It was very sluggish for an automatic tranny. It took WAY to much throttle to get it going, and the shifts were annoyingly horrible. It had a tendancy to nose dive between the shifts.

We ended up with a standard. She learned how to drive it rather than taking the auto.

 

Well, I don't know how they had been driving that car (it uses adaptive software which does effect the way the auto works) or what software it had on it, but using the tranny as we do, shifting ourselves most of the time, ours is great and very responsive. It works well with the handling/nimbleness of the car - certainly not sluggish or nosediving and better feeling (in man mode) then the BMW steptronics I've driven. We actually went from an 03 MCS to the 05 MCSa and love it for city and backroads driving (Poor M Coupe barely gets driven, clutching in the city is just poopy).

 

I've had my MCSa for 2 months and 5K miles and I love it. The manual shift is as much fun as a true manual shift without the clutch and the paddles on the wheel are a blast. I'm getting 34 on the highway and 25.8 around town (my calculations, not the MINI gauges), so the economy is there as well. That 34 mpg is at 70 on the MINI speedo...which is about 2 miles slow by my Garmin GPS.

I work out of my MINI installing marine electronics and the auto relaxes me while motoring to and from boats.

 

I decided on the auto because of LA's freeway parking lots. Had it for about 8 months and started adding mods to it. A blast to drive!

 

That's pretty impressive, mine never averaged over 25mpg, now I get about 22mpg from a mix of city & highway driving, granted the odo just reaches 2.3k. Hope it will get better over time.

I rarely use the paddle shift, mainly if I'm not careful enough, it gives me a jerky downshift, I find I need to rev engine up a bit first to give it a smooth transition, which becomes a little annoying as sometimes I just forgot to do that or didn't do enough. Any tips on mastering the paddle shifter?

 

Love my 2006 MCS auto. I bought it because my wife has never driven a standard. I thought it would be a bummer but after driving it I have no regrets whatsoever.

 

Check again around 5K to 7K miles. The engine doesn't really loosen up until that point.

 

I'm in Los Angeles and with our traffic a manual tranny was not even an option. My MCSa is a great ride and tons of fun.

 

My MCSa keeps up with 90% of the cars on the highway (I think the rest are tempting fate). It's over eager to downshift, but I prefer that to the alternative. I know the paddle shifters are fast because Eric Rowland tried them in my car and it seemed as though we were going pretty fast (but passengers tend to think that anyway). I have been meaning to try out the paddles but haven't needed to. The car has been trouble free for the year I have owned it, but maybe that's because of it's PW/B color. I learned on NAM that PW cars are made to be more reliable while BRG cars are more powerful. One learns so much on NAM.

Happy motoring.
PW/B #66

 

Ha! Well, I have a BRG/W 2005 MCSa that is also reliable... the best of both worlds.... Maybe it is my BRG-painted mirror caps - they confuse the reliability gremlins....

 

We bought a MCSa coz the better half did not want through the hassle of learning to shift and then handling the NY traffic.

I was not so hot about the automatic, but the MCSa tranny is surely a revelation. When I get a chance to drive the car (rare as it is, ), I use only the manual mode. Initially, I used the paddles for shifting. Now, I only use the shifter, becoz the shifting is more 'Stick' like. I have to let go of the gas a bit and then shift up/down if I am using the shifter. However, if I am using the paddles, I can shift without taking my foot off the gas. My experience is that the paddles shift smoother than the shifter.

I love having the paddles, becoz I can keep both hands on the steering. Pretty useful when you are hadling curves at faster speeds (atleast in comparison to other motorists!!!).

'D' is the mode my wife drives most often and it is very smooth. It is definitely not as sporty as the other modes, but then my view is biased since I drive in 'manual'. For my wife and some of her friends, even 'D' is pretty neat and the additional option of 'SD' is useful, when she wants to squirt in the traffic.....

All in all, I absolutely love the manual transmission.