Mini Underwhelms

The day I’ve antic­i­pated for 2 weeks came and went. After a chilly drive down (the 1st half with the top down, until we got too cold) I drove right by the deal­er­ship. The Mini place shares the build­ing with the BMW folks and it is a new build­ing that is attrac­tively land­scaped. Unfor­tu­nately the pal­metto trees and other plants prac­ti­cally hide the place from the road unless you know it is there. I guess this is prob­a­bly OK with them because it fits more in with what I think the BMW car dealer phi­los­o­phy might be, if you want one of our cars, come find us. Not like your basic US/Japanese dealer where the cars are on spin­ning pedestals 6 inches from the road with flags and bal­loons flap­ping every­where. Really, has there been mar­ket­ing stud­ies that found a direct cor­re­la­tion to bal­loons and car buy­ing desire.

We turned into a dif­fer­ent Hen­drick dealer’s lot and tried to snake our way back as it looked all con­nected. It was not and we ended up way out back, close to the BMW ser­vice area. There were a cou­ple of Minis back there that we looked at for a few min­utes before going in the ser­vice counter and ask­ing where the Mini deal­er­ship was located (it was still not appar­ent from where we were.) On the short walk over, I dragged Donna over to see a BMW Z8 that was in for ser­vice. Donna wanted to know what the big deal was and I said, “It’s like a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lar car.” She har­rumphed and said, “It’s ugly.” In mag­a­zine pho­tos I thought it looked real sharp, but in per­son I had to agree with her.

When we arrived the place was strewn with Minis of all vari­a­tions and col­ors. We met out “Motor­ing Advi­sor” Dana and she set about lin­ing up a cou­ple of cars to drive. My only requests were to drive a base Cooper and an S, with one of them hav­ing a sun­roof. First up was the base car with no sun­roof. It had some dealer installed 16″ wheels instead of the stan­dard 15s, too bad, I had hoped to try the base in stock form so I could gage ride/road feel and han­dling dif­fer­ences when I got in the S. Didn’t really mat­ter as the MA rides with you and guides you on about a 10 mile loop. You get a half a mile of Inter­state and then just city streets. There is one patch of a road with a cou­ple of bends in it, but noth­ing to really gage the han­dling capa­bil­i­ties. Next was a drive in the super­charged Cooper S. The nor­mal S tester and the one she wanted to take us in didn’t have a sun­roof either. I reminded her that I wanted one with the sun­roof, so off she went to find one that fit the bill. Found one but I think that she didn’t want to take us in it was that hadn’t really been fully prepped. It still had plas­tic on the seats and card­board all over the inside. It didn’t mat­ter to me because all I wanted out of this was to see if I felt the extra 50 horses were worth the $3K over the base. Out for the same 10 mile loop.

When we got back I had one more request, I wanted to see some cloth seats. The base had leather and the S had the leatherette. The fake stuff was a very nice qual­ity, the feel and fin­ish would fool a lot of peo­ple, but I think cloth would be bet­ter than the vinyl and leather at $1600 was too much for too lit­tle. And if I was buy­ing a Mini I think the cloth would be the way I’d go. There was one she could show me, but Dana had to go back inside to get the key. After we stood around a bit idly chat­ting about col­ors, I thanked her for her time and asked for her card. I think we both knew that I wasn’t buying.

Here is why I’m not buy­ing: Nei­ther blue in per­son blow my skirt up, after that any color was a com­pro­mise and nei­ther Donna or I could pick one we really liked. The inside was too plas­tic feel­ing, the door pulls felt really cheap, the dash when you touched it had the feel of the side of a Bar­bie pedal car. The rear view mir­ror on the inside reminded my of a child’s com­pact mir­ror. It was small and quirk­ily shaped and sur­rounded by a 1/2 wide plas­tic frame. On the first run we started out with the A/C on and the fan seemed really loud for the amount of air it was putting out. On the sec­ond run with the roof open and both win­dows down it was really noisy, even at city dri­ving speeds. Almost as loud as the Miata with full top down and if you are going to have that much sound and fury, why not have the whole con­vert­ible expe­ri­ence. The sun­roof from the inside didn’t seem as big as it does look­ing at it in the roof. I didn’t find the dead pedal until I was sta­tion­ary back at the dealer look­ing at the cloth inte­rior. I was not impressed, Donna on the other hand didn’t like it at all. A ten mile, 15 minute drive is not enough of an expe­ri­ence to really tell if you like the car, for that length of time a new Chevy Cav­a­lier is prob­a­bly a won­der­ful car. I guess if you were meant for the car that is all it would take, but hav­ing owned a Miata, I needed to be sold and wasn’t.

Here is some of the nice things. The base car, although 15 HP shy of my Miata and 200 lbs. heav­ier, felt just as peppy. Not being a big HP guy the S ver­sion wouldn’t have been worth it. Good thing too, as the hood scoop sort of ruined the cute front end we both thought. Damn thing is cute as a but­ton. Plenty of leg room, I had the seat for­ward a cou­ple of notches. The doors opened really wide. Did I men­tion it’s cute?

Donna said it best for both of us, the inside doesn’t live up to the fun promised by the outside.

Pur­chased Today: $14.00
Money spent since 03/03/03: $2641.54
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/02/03: 283