| Thanks, I greatly appreciate your opinion. I agree with you, I naturally tend to fix cars instead of replace. I spoke with another service center, British American Autoworks, who also do work on MINI's. They used to repair (break open and fix) the CVT transmissions but they gave it up and now just replace them. I found that rather interesting. The new MINI's all have the regular 5 speed automatic and no longer carry the CVT, that gives me hope that repairing one of them wouldn't be quite as difficult as it's proven technology. I've been out to drive a Toyota Matrix, Subaru Outback Sport, and several different Mazda 3's but none of them are cranking my tractor. I'm going to test drive a new MINI this evening. There's a good chance I may end up with a new MINI by the time I finally finish all my test driving. I keep coming back to the fact that I like it so much more than the others, the other cars at this point would be "okay" as in I can live with it where the MINI is "awesome" to drive. So, unless I really don't like driving the new one (doubtful), there's a solid chance I'll be owning a second one. :-)  | 
