I just ordered my new Cooper Clubman from Preston Hall Motors in Stockton-on-Tees. They are my nearest dealer (28 miles) and I had also been recommended to them by another MINI owner. But I very nearly didn't - I downloaded their location map from the internet as we had never been to Stockton before - and the map was wrong!
We spent over half an hour searching for their showroom. There were Jaguar and Vauxhall showrooms nearby, we went in the Vauxhall one and looked at the new Astra (very nice), but they were busy and nobody spoke to us. So we left and decided to go home - then by sheer chance found the MINI showroom, nowhere near where the map showed.
By then it was approaching closing time, but a very nice sales lady (Rebecca) showed us the Clubman - the showroom seemed to be full of Clubmans! - and although she was about to go home, and it was a Saturday evening, she took my wife and I for test drives.
We liked a silver Cooper Clubman with black roof and Pepper pack (£16,800) and after a little haggling we got £4300 trade-in for our 2005 MG ZR. I was perfectly happy with this, because although the MG was mint with only 21,000 miles on the clock, it had been vandalised on the near side by some pond life who scratched it deeply with a key from end to end, every panel damaged.
That was in October. I bought one of those Quixx scratch removal kits (rubbish, did not work) and so was resigned to a repair bill of several hundred pounds.
Anyhow when Becky checked out the MG of course she saw the scratching and guessed it would cost about £800 to repair it. Their first offer was £3200 for the MG to allow for the repair. We came away and on the Monday Becky phoned us and we negotiated a new deal of £12500 plus the MG, equivalent to a trade-in price of £4300. Did I get a good deal I wonder? Anyhow I was satisfied, and ordered the car for March 1st delivery, to get the 08 registration plate.
I must say that we were impressed by Becky, she was knowledgeable, answered all questions to our satisfaction, was pleasant and not pushy. She is a credit to Preston Hall Motors.
We did not bother to shop around, apart from the distance to other dealers I doubted whether we could have saved more than the odd £100 or two elsewhere and I didn't want the trouble.
So we are looking forward to being MINI owners again in March. The last one we had was a 1275GT with Clubman-type front end, back in the 1970s.
By the way I noticed that Preston Hall is one of a group of MINI dealers known as the Cooper Group. Does anyone know if this is the same as, or connected with, John Cooper Garages? |