MINI Ownership Experience?

[lupinsea]

Edjumacate me on the whole MINI thing.

Now that a bunch of you are MINI owners. . . how is it?

As you all know, I lust after an MX-5 Miata. But with your rave reviews of the MINIs you have. . . well, those sound like a ton of fun, too. But with a BIG difference over the Miata.

They can seat 4 people and offer hatchback practicality.



With having a new member of our family, the 2-seat Miata wouldn't be as useful. Basically, it'd take over the ZHPs job which has devolved into a commuter car for me since I'm really not going on weekend, or even evening joyrides with it. The last dedicated driving "thing" I did with the ZHP was the big 2 week road grip down to california 2.5 years ago. I love driving the ZHP but opportunity for sporty driving comes only during the commute, errand running, job-site visits, or other select times.

Anyways, I think a MX-5 would work ok in a few years. By that point my son would be forward facing and I'd be able to turn off the front passenger airbag for the 2 mile ride to daycare. For family trips we'd do what we do now . . take the Volvo. I suspect that even with a MINI, we'd still take the Volvo on family trips.

But . . .

Anyways. Some questions - this applies to the second generation (R56?) cars, specifically, the S's:

Q1 - How is the whole reliability, maintenance, support thing. I'd have no qualms about upkeep on the MX-5. But how easy/difficult is the MINI for user maintenance?

Q2 - The MINI is a "premium" small car made by BMW. . . does that mean it has the same "premium" repair costs that the bigger BMWs have? Are parts and labor going to be more expensive for the MINI than the MX-5?

Q3 - Are there many independent repair shops or are you locked into the MINI dealer (or BMW dealer) for all service? I think we have only one MINI dealer in the NW and it's close to 50 miles away.

Q4 - Used MINIs. Ok? Anyone have an idea how well the MINIs hold up as used cars? Are they built pretty stout? I'd prefer NOT to by new, on any car, just to avoid the initial depreciation hit. But is it worth getting a used MINI?

Q5 - Used MINI premiums? For a while used MINI prices were pretty much the same as new MINI prices. Odd, but that's what it was like in the Northwest? Has this changed? It was like this with the S2000 for a while but eventually the market saturated a bit and the used S2k price have dropped. Have the used MINI prices come down a bit?

Q6 - Longevity of the brand? They seem to be doing well. Any chance the company will not be around in 5-10 years? Though given the recent gas price panic and their reasonably good MPG rating it would seem like they'd be well positioned for future economic conditions.

Any other comments?






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