HI everyone,

I'm looking at two 2006 S's with low miles, but I am having trouble getting past my nightmare of a 2007 S. I need to know if the first gen was substantially more reliable than the 07's up.

In 2007 I bought a brand S. I purposely waited to get the New BMW designed model with the turbo rather than the super charger.

Loved my Mini driving experience, but HATED the reliability. From a reliability standpoint it was the worst car I have ever owned. Had the timing chain go slack 3 times in the 50 some thousand miles I owned it. The last time it took the valves with it. My dealer was great - shout out to Ralph Schomp Mini in Denver- but Mini corporate was god awful. It only made it a few hundred miles on the last replacement before it broke. Mini corporate wouldn't pay for anything, but Schomp covered it. At first Schomp apologized profusely and even had the mechanic speak with me personally and state that he must have forgotten to torque the crank nut. However after he had repaired it again he found that Mini corporate had made yet a third version of the repair kit that was different than the one her used just a couple of week before to fix my car. He said he was now convinced that there was something wrong with the first kit he installed on my car and he had never had a failure so soon on any other car he had worked on and apparently the timing chain issue was a common and frequent problem. I had many other smaller problems and even though they were covered under warranty the car was in the shop way too much. After the last timing chain failure which coincided with the warranty expiration I realized I was not rich enough to own a MINI, lol, and sold it.

So now, I just bought a condo with a one car garage and I'd love to be able park one or both my motorcycles in the garage with my car at the same time. Therefore, for the very first time ever, my major criteria for buying a car is that it be 'short', lol!

I immediately discarded the Smart Car, because well, that wouldn't be smart.

The Chevy Spark is out because I don't want to have to turn in my 'man card'.

The Fiat 500 Abrath is a little tempting, but I'm concerned about both reliability and strong winds!

My son has a turbo Chevy Sonic with a reprogram that actually worked great to boost power significantly. It is very reliable all over the world and seems to be about every third car I see in New Zealand when we tour on the motorcycle there. It's the logical choice, but alas it doesn't have much soul.

I like the Ford Fiesta ST, but there are reliability problems with it, but the ratings may be tainted by the lesser versions' absolutely horrible manual automatic transmission (I know one person who is on his third). That transmission is a notch above the original MINI CVT however. It had the durability of a potato chip.

Sooooooooo........I'm thinking of an '06 S. I had a friend who wanted a MINI really badly inspite of the problems he knew I was having. I had two friends with first gen S's and they weren't having problems and at the various MINI meets people seemed to be having much better luck with the first gen and there were a few with high mileage ones even then. I advised my friend to get a first gen S. He bought an '04 with 40K miles and now has over 100K on it with only a couple of minor issues.

Are the first gen S's, especially this last year for them, reliable or am I in for the pain of owning a wonder driving fun car that doesn't run half the time like my 07.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to respond,

Mark

 

The '06 S up to the '07 S Cabrio are the way to go. They are equipped with the W11 engine and 6 speed Getrag gear box, both bullet proof. The 1st years of the Gen 2 came with the horrible french N14 engine to be avoided.

 

I was ready to pull the trigger on an 07 R56 but listened to my son's advice to buy an 06 as it was at the end of a model cycle not the beginning. Most of the squawks had been worked out. So I puchased an 06 R53. Never and I mean never have I had one regret--not one. Fly'n Brick is spot on. Good luck.

 

If you spent any time here, and with your number of posts would think that answer is yes, you should know about the issues with the 07 N14 engine and that the Gen1 does not have that boat anchor.

The Fiat, put it along side your 07 and they are paternal twins relative to issues.

 

I did have a bunch of posts for the three years I owned the 07 S and was very into it. I autocrossed and opentracked it a little. That was at the end of my racing days though. I was getting more into serious rock crawling in a very modified Jeep. Now I've moved on to motorcycles and somehow own 4 of them. One in New Zealand were we've probably toured 10 or 12 thousand miles in the last year and a half. I haven't posted or looked at this forum in 4 or 5 years and really haven't kept up with MINIs. The 07 was just such a nightmare that I moved on and scratch MINIs off my list until I visited my old friend who moved out of state and discovered that his first Gen MINI was doing very well. It surprised me. I googled MINI reliability and from what I was seeing it didn't look like the new MINIs were doing any better than my 07 so I thought I'd explore the first GEN and see if there were some low mileage ones around and there are. Most are convertibles unfortunately. And there was a lot more going wrong with my 07 than just the timing chains. It was all kinds of annoying little things that always needed a part order or a long computer reflash. It was nice to have a loaner, but it was always a nearly 3 hour round trip to the dealer. I think at the point I sold mine in discuss MINI corporate wasn't even admitting to a wide spread problem with the timing chain. I was just getting it fixed under warranty. The last one was just out of warranty and the dealer covered it as I related above. With the info provided I'll stay open to a first GEN S. I'm still researching the Fiesta ST. I'll need to take one of them for a spin and test fit it in my new garage. Thanks for the information!

 

 

The mechanical parts are great even though the rest of the car is like having a puppy cause every time you look at it it pisses on the ground.

Beside everything leaking in a well timed succession, it's hard to beat for the money.

 

After much consideration and some test drives I decided to get a Fiesta ST. I really narrowed it down to the Fiesta ST and the Focus ST. In some ways I liked the Focus better, but the Fiesta handled better and was more fun to drive with great handling. Also the Fiesta is smaller so my motorcycles fit better in the garage. I really liked driving my Cooper S, but just thinking about it again brought back all the reliability issues (or should I say unreliability issues?) again and I couldn't get past that.