Life of Brian

Go read Part 1 and come back, I’ll wait.

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As you can imagine, in today’s car world where the pick-up and 5-seat SUV are king, used Minis are hard to find, especially with our criteria. Internet searching for available cars in our price range ($20-25k) that weren’t in San Francisco or Portland turned up a few, but they were all over 200 miles away. This seemed to me to be the perfect excuse to try one of those “we bring the car to you” online stores. All I had to do was submit the car’s VIN and then answer a bunch of questions on what I thought its condition was. I tried Vroom and they offered $7,550 for 2013 Mini. I eliminated them because I had already done the price check thing with Kelly Blue Book and they said the trade-in value range was $8,500 to $9,500.

Carvana on the other hand said it was worth $11k. So, we found a car that we liked on their site and I started the process of selling our Mini to them and buy a newer one with an automatic. Trouble was when I entered the delivery Zip Code they told me that I had 2 options for the transaction location, a Walmart parking lot in Salem, OR (240 miles) or someplace off I-80 outside Reno near the CA-NV border (260 miles.) After reading reviews on the Miata forums about dealing with Carvana a couple folks reported that it went smooth, but one person mentioned they didn’t show up the first time for the appointment. So, we crossed Carvana off the list too because we didn’t want to drive that far for a car we hadn’t test driven.

In one of those Miata forum threads I found someone who mentioned CarMax as an alternative. Huh, I hadn’t even thought of that place, maybe there is one in Medford just 70 miles away. Nice thought, but the closest CarMax store is in, you guessed it, Salem (or as I found out later Reno.) A search of the Salem store revealed a 2016 auto Mini base model for $19,998. Well, what the heck, at least we can test drive the car first. I entered our Mini’s details again and within minutes they offered $10k.

After lunch on Thursday, we packed an overnight bag, made a reservation at a hotel and took off. The drive is boring for the first half along US97, but after Bend and heading west on US20 it is up and over the Cascades with plenty of twisty bits. The CarMax didn’t open until 11:00 AM so we explored around the State Capitol grounds in the fog for a bit. Then we took our car through an automated car wash to clean all the bugs off we smashed on the way up. To kill the last hour, we did a bit of shopping in a Target because all we got is a Walmart in Klamath Falls.

We were the first people in the store. We filled out some paperwork, showed our licenses and insurance cards, swapped keys so they could look at our car while we were gone. The car was brought around for us and we took it for a drive. The auto tranny felt weird at first, but soon it felt normal. The car only has just under 29k on the clock and it looks in excellent condition. The cheap tires they stuck on it were noisy, but that was a non-issue because we had earmarked money for new tires and a new set of snow tires too. We can’t reuse our old set with this car because this generation Mini has moved to 5 lug wheels. It had a working radio, the windows and sunroof worked great and everything was working just fine. *foreshadowing*

We returned back to the store and settled in for the paperwork phase. They agreed that we would get the $10k for our 2013 and we wrote them a check for the remainder. In spite of not having to do the 4 square crap with a salesman, the sales manager thing and the finance guy dance it still took us 3 hours to get off the lot with our “new” Mini. After an exciting lunch at a Wendy’s (a whole ‘nother story) we hit the road home. What with the afternoon traffic around Bend, the twisty mountain roads and the slow 18-wheelers and motorhomes, just like the trip up, the 240 miles took us about 6 hours.

Everything was fine until I hit a quiet stretch of US97 and turned on the high beams. They worked fine until I needed to turn them off. Pulling back on the stalk had no effect. After a couple of cars flashed angrily at me, I tried another way, I quickly turned the off the lights totally and quickly back on. This did the trick, but it really is not the way to go forward.

CarMax has a fairly comprehensive warrantee of 90 days or 4,000 miles, so Saturday morning I called the CarMax store. After defeating the robot guardian by speaking gibberish at it (hitting zero had no effect) I was connected to a sales rep. The person I spoke to said that they would fix the problem for us, but at their service center. I explained that I was 240 miles away and would prefer someplace closer. She then offered up the closest Mini dealer to which I said its in Portland which is an extra 40 miles further away than they are. She said I should call the service department on Monday and that probably could be worked out.

Part 3

A few weeks ago I noticed that Donna was walking with a slight limb. We got an appointment with her foot doctor and he diagnosed it as a “drop foot”. He recommended getting a brace and set us up with a place in town to get fitted for one. When she asked what causes drop foot, he passed a referral on to a neurologist. Met with Dr. Neuro and he tested her with some electrodes and the left leg was noticeably weaker. The nerves that that control this run down each leg and exit the spine between a couple of vertebrae. This usually is accompanied by pain, but she has none, so they scheduled an MRI.

Well, the MRI did show some slight bulging in the disc that is in the right spot, but the neurologist thought it really wasn’t bad enough to cause the problem. He said he’d have a spine specialist he knew take a look. We haven’t heard back from him yet. This weakness also makes it so she can no longer operate the clutch in the Mini which is a fairly heavy clutch for such a small car. So we started looking for a Mini with an automatic transmission.

Couple of Sundays ago we found a 2016 Cooper S at the local Ford dealer. On Monday we went down to test drive it but they couldn’t find the keys. The salesman said it was possibly already sold because it was parked far away from the rest of the used cars. His manager was in a meeting so he couldn’t ask. We looked around the lot and found the only other car on the lot that was possibly small enough to fit on the short side of our garage, a 2020 Honda Fit. We took it for a test drive and it wasn’t a bad car but it lacks any character and is too long to fit on that short side of the garage. When we returned the Fit the manager was still in the meeting, so the salesman said he would find out about the Mini and call us, so we exchanged phone numbers.

Naturally he never called. Nor did we hear from him on Tuesday morning, So I called. They couldn’t find the salesman, but the woman who answered the phone said she’d find out about the Mini and call me right back. She didn’t. After lunch we just drove back down to the dealer and this time our salesman was magically there. The story on the Mini was that it had something wrong with the radio and they were waiting on a part. We asked to test drive it anyway so we could see if we even liked the car or not. We did like it (not really fond of the green with white roof combo though) but what about the radio? The screen of the “radio” was stuck and the only thing you got out of the speakers was AM static. But the radio is also your interface for setup of what your key does, your tire pressure, oil level, setup your Bluetooth, etc. Their answer was we’ll give you $1,000 off the $20k. I said I’ll go home and check out some forums and see about a possible aftermarket solution.

Poked around in a couple of Mini forums and found out that replacing the radio with an aftermarket unit was a dicey play at best, so I decided they would have to fix it before buying. The next day Donna asked me to call the shop over in Medford that we have had Mini fixes from in the past to ask their opinion. I was connected with a very nice guy who took 5 or so minutes explaining how the system worked and letting me know it would be a couple grand at minimum to fix this. His advice was to walk away and never buy a Mini with existing electrical problems. Called the Ford dealer and said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Part 2