Thinking of getting a mini

grogan_20

Im looking into gettin my first car and have my eyes on a mini cooper. i dont know alot about cars so im just wondering does any1 have any information about them and if their good for a first car, and in the current economic climate, what would be a good price for a 2004 mini?

Cheers:)

Eric Cartman

2nd hand minis arent great imho , theres a lot of reports of transmission problems and small but expensive problems like electric window motors stop working. two of the girls in work have minis (1 cooper and 1 mini one) both of them have had atleast 600 euro of out of warranty repairs to do since they bought them 2004 and 2005 years respectivley , the cooper has a dodgy fuel pump at the moment,

anonymous_joe

I've one that's been running sweetly. Don't drive it much, usually my sister who does, but it's going fine.

lau1247

Nice ride.. cool car.. if things are used correctly/ well looked after, they hardly ever break..

Had you have a test drive??
Arrange one..

ytareh

Never drove a Cooper but the Missus had a ONE and it was a ROCKET....Talk of rough Chrysler engines made in Brazil(?) ...dunno, but this was as smooth and accelerative as a 318is.I would imagine the ONE is better for real world low revs driving (but the ONE loved the revs too...)Handling was of course sublime...far , far better/faster than the MX5 I had shortly before for 99% of drivers I would imagine.
BUT fuel economy for what it was, was pretty useless, rarely high 30s...The Power Steering pumps sounded like banshees despite the BMW garages assurance they were OK and I would not like a high (over 50-60K miles?)mileage one .
While we never had one Id imagine as posted that a nasty bill was never far over the horizon...Oh and space in them is a joke ...next to impossible for anyone with kids/pram/bicycle etc Id imagine
The Cooper would probably have even worse MPG and I think I read that even the little 1.4 diesel while nippy (I had a test/spin in one and it was lovely)was not THAT economical...These are going to keep falling in value while the ancient Minis will continue to hold value/appreciate ...Buyer Beware!

rebel.ranter

Almost bought a Mini Cooper new 3 years ago (March 2006), bought a 2nd and 5 series instead!

I should have bought the Mini from a resale point of view, despite the immaculate condition & decent spec of the 2002 525i I think I would be lucky to get €9k for it now given recent price drops for the newer model (recent story on here about a high mileage 2004 525i going for €12k).

The Mini Cooper I specced at the time, black, 17' 5 spoke alloys, full leather sports seats, full moon roof, aircon, etc was working out at about €27.5k at the time (slightly more than I paid for the 5). They are now going for anything from €13.5k-€21k, so better residuals.

I rented a Cooper for 10 days to drive along the southern coast of Spain. It was great fun, we had to have one of the bags on the back seat but that was my only real complaint. Had the original Mini as my first car & I can safely say that there is more room in the new one! (I'm 6'3 but fitted fine in both ).

You are buying into the marketing a little bit & paying a premium for it but they are still great fun.
Go for it.

EDIT: In fact this car (click here) is a very similar spec to the one I had planned to get (well minus multi-function steering wheel & moon roof).