[the prince]

I am looking to buy a new mini cooper or cooper s. Have been advised by the father in law, after he recently watched jeremy clarkson reviewing the mini, that jc strongly advised buying the cooper, rather than the cooper s, and to get it chipped by a reputable tuner. I have checked out some performance tuners, and these don't seem to offer significant performance upgrades unless its a cooper s.

Does anyone have any experience of this, or useful advice?

[T13 Fighter]

Check the FAQ section or look at the various model specific sections. I think that Clarkson was referring to chipping the ONE to make it up to a Cooper. It would be very difficult and expensive to tune a Cooper to the same level as a S, it would probably cost more than the price difference in the models.

[Cold Side]

The Cooper and the One have different tuning. So, as JC said, it's easy to take the One to a specialist and he can upgrade it. The Cooper S however, has a supercharger. So you cannot upgrade the engine to the 163 bhp Cooper S spec just by chipping it.

Before purchasing the One with a view to chipping it, contact your likely insurance company. Norwich Union said they wouldn't cover me if I had the car upgraded in that way. They would only cover upgrades if it was basic stuff like increasing the cylinder heads. They were about £300 cheaper than anyone else I tried as well, so changing insurance company is an expensive option.

[Beastmaster]

Quote: Originally Posted by the prince

I am looking to buy a new mini cooper or cooper s. Have been advised by the father in law, after he recently watched jeremy clarkson reviewing the mini, that jc strongly advised buying the cooper, rather than the cooper s, and to get it chipped by a reputable tuner. I have checked out some performance tuners, and these don't seem to offer significant performance upgrades unless its a cooper s.

Does anyone have any experience of this, or useful advice?

JC actually said buy a One, chip it and you will have the performance of a Cooper. By and large this is true, the "S" however, is a different beast altogether. The Cooper is pretty much as fast as it can get in standard form and all the chipping or modding in the world wont enable "S" performance to be gotten out of a Cooper.