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I'm a Mazda RX-8 owner. I love my car, but it's not the most reliable car. It's having trouble starting recently and as it's almost 5 years old my wife and I thought it might be time to look at a new car.
I've always liked the MINI and the more I read about them the more I think I would like them for their fun to drive factor. However, I've also been reading a tremendous amount of negative articles about their reliability. The most recent Consumer Reports magazine shows the MINI as having below average "Predicted Reliability." I understand that this is just "predictive" number crunching, but it comes from somewhere. Apparently a lot of it might come from people like those posting at this consumer complaints website: Consumer complaints about Mini Cooper This site alone shows 29 pages of customers reporting failed clutches not covered under warranty in the first year of ownership, blown engines, trim falling off as they drive them off the lot, tons of failed CVT boxes not covered under warranty etc, etc. This all has me wondering how this car is still on the road let alone listed on Kelly Blue Book as being one of the top ten cars for holding their resale value!
Now I know that anything before 2003 should be considered a MINI beta car and they are horribly unreliable (from what I've read) but I'm reading about brand new 2007+ MINIs and it seems they're just as bad.
I'm a Mac user, I'm guilty of drinking the kool aid from time to time where I defend a Mac even though it's at fault for something. I get the cult thing. Is this car that iconic that people who buy them just overlook all of these major problems? Or am I reading a collection of faults that reflect only a small percentage of the overall MINI community?
I know I can just buy a Honda Civic and be sure it'll start every day without trim falling off or the transmission falling out for years on end, but the MINI sounds so damned fun!
Thanks
I've got an almost 7 year old Cooper, minimal problems (replaced clutch @ 80,000, passenger window motor is erratic). I know there's a few lemons out there & I know a few people who've had them, but then again, there's HWS who just rolled over 360,000 miles in his 2003 Mini (Milwaukee area).
i think there's another way to look at the problems you'll read about on this site and NAM (North American Motoring, good for a lot of US-specific stuff on MINIs). And that's that people who don't have faults with their cars don't tend to start threads saying "30,000 and clutch still fine" ... so reading 29 pages of clutch complaints out of how many tens of thousands of MINI owners have posted here over the years ...
The CVT is the only transmission (imho) that seems to have gotten a decent number of complaints about it .. and that transmission is not being used still.
As far as clutches go ... some of that has to do with people and how they drive. Not every clutch failure is a bad manufactured clutch.
A lot of the resale value in the US has to do with demand and supply. There are still waiting lists in the US, and that keeps the prices up on MINIs. And the increasing gas prices in the US have made people start to think about downsizing their vehicles, and so that helps prices.
As far as reliability generally ... I'd say it's about average, based on my four years of MINI experience and knowing what people on this site and my many friends with MINIs have experienced. I've had replaced under warranty in four years: a thermostat housing, an engine mount, and an oxygen sensor in the engine. All were small things ... and I'd say that's about average for what a 4-year-old MINI (mine's an 06 S) will have had done under warranty.
I can say, honestly, that at least my experience with my dealer in the US has been great ... there's never been any questions about replacing things, never had them telling me to replace tyres, etc before needed doing.
If there's anything that makes the MINI a bit more susceptible to needing repairs its all the high-tech electronics in it ... it's got more do-dads on it than a lot of the 'more reliable' models which have less fancy electronics in them.
And personally, I'll take the occasional odd extra repair in exchange for having a car that at least once a week someone comes up to me to talk about it in the parking lot.
You want fun, buy a MINI. Mine has left me sitting a few times, (dead battery) but a simple jump and I was back up and running again. It happens, but you have to ask me if it is worth it. Yes, it is.
This type of thinking has me scared too. How can the MINI have a "bonnet-to-boot" warranty covering 'everything' but the dealer can make you pay for a clutch that might burn out in that time regardless of how you drive? I don't plan on beating the snot out of any car, but from what I've read most people are told they drove it wrong when they had to pay for a new clutch.
That doesn't seem fair.
that's going to depend on your dealer, to be honest.
i specifically asked about the clutch when i bought my mini, asked if it was covered, since the MINI was the first manual car I'd owned. the answer i got from my dealer (in the USA) was that it was covered, but that after 3 or 4 replacements they'd tell me to buy an automatic.
So, make sure you know what's covered, and what people have to say about your dealer. Dealers and their service departments vary widely. I got a quote for Inspection 1 from one dealer, in the DC area. It was $200 higher than my own dealer actually charged. Likewise, the first dealer I test-drove a MINI at was not the one I bought at. They were put out to find me an S to test drive, and said the cooper and S were practically the same, so test driving a cooper was close enough. So I went elsewhere.
I have had a first and second gen car without any problems. I recently sold my Merc SLK which in the first 18 months of ownership had 2 warranty faults and very patchy dealers. By constrast I have found MINI dealers to be good and the cars fun. No new car is that good that people would love them regardless of reliability. It is loved because it brings a smile to your face every time you drive it. I would recommend a MINI to anyone and it would make a worthy comparator to the RX8.
Well my wife and I ordered our black beauty this afternoon. We couldn't find anything similar enough to what I wanted on any lots in our area so we are having one built. It'll be a 2010 Cooper S black on black with the sport package and 17" black crown rims. The only other options we added were the bluetooth package and the black jack cover for the rear-view mirror to finish out the blacked out look. I can't wait for it to get here!
The first dealership we went to treated us rather poorly, but the second one was great. Our rep was nice and seemingly honest. Our trade-in value for my rx8 wasn't as great as we had hoped, but he worked with us to meet in the middle by shaving off some money from the final price of the new car. Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out and can't wait for my 4-6 weeks to be up already!
Thanks for the help and advice.
Though i would stick my oar in on this MINI reliability thing . i have had a 51 plate cooper an 04 CooperS 9(BRILLIANT) an 07 plate R56 S (not so brilliant) sold it for a GP(still got it) and a 53 plate Cooper (midland gearbox) i bought s/hand which i use everyday all day . thus far apart from a few niggles they have all been perfectly OK (the midland could collapse at any time!!) I drive MINIs because they're fun if it costs so what -you wouldnt divorce you beautiful wife just because she forgot to do dinner for you one day would you- well some might!!
The other side of the reliability thingy is that you very rarely get posts about how happy owners are on a reliability front. I'll hold up my hands, I'm guilty of ranting when I had bad MINIs but I don't post how happy I am now I've got all the problems sorted.
Just remember how many have been sold, if the owner hasn't complained then chances are their car is problem free, that's a lot of happy customers!
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