New car, got a bit unsure! (Early production)

[eldo]

Hi guys and girls!

Norway calling!

I just wrote a import contract on a Mini Cooper S R56 first registered in Germany 18.09.2006. The car is laser blue with white details, sunroof and almost fully equipped. The car has only run 3500 km and the previous owners are BMW themselves (Known as "ex-works" cars. "Ex-works" being the term used on cars owned by BMW)

Im staring to get kind of worried since I read about a lot of "rattle" etc from these cars.

My questions are as follows:

1. Does anybody know if there are some known issues with early production cars?
2. Even though my car is produced in 2006 is it called a 2007 model?
3. When did production of R56 start and when did production of R53 stop?

Best Regards

K

[MINIAC]

There is a MINI2 News story about a special event in September 2006, celebrating the start of production of the new MINI models.

Production of R50 and R53 models for the US market continued until November 28, 2006.

Here's the member's MINI Profile breakdown of R56 models built in 2006:

2006-10 = 6
2006-11 = 43
2006-12 = 49

These are considered 2007 models.

[eldo]

Well mine is registered in september, so then I have the earliest one on the forum?

[kevkbuk]

Quote: Originally Posted by eldo (original)

I just wrote a import contract on a Mini Cooper S R56 first registered in Germany 18.09.2006. The car is laser blue with white details, sunroof and almost fully equipped. The car has only run 3500 km and the previous owners are BMW themselves (Known as "ex-works" cars. "Ex-works" being the term used on cars owned by BMW)

1. Does anybody know if there are some known issues with early production cars?

No issues in particular with the early cars, some Cooper S do suffer from a cold start clatter noise but its not confined to early models.

Quote:

2. Even though my car is produced in 2006 is it called a 2007 model?

Yep, the R56 started production in September 2006, its the 2007 model year.

FYI Most of the early UK dealer demo cars were laser blue with white details. I'd wonder if it was a dealer demo car or a press car. If so you can pretty much gurantee it wasn't run in as per the manual!

[eldo]

You might have a point. But it has been owned by BMW (driven by an employee) themselves and my dealership told me that everything they bought from them witch was ex-works cars were all beautiful and 100% ship shape.

Lets hope thats the case this time as well!

Anyway, I do look forward to pick it up 11 of june!

[Paul]

Wheel arch clips used to come off too easily, they changed the parts to stop this. This affected early cars. Also of course without stop/start etc. your resale may not be so good in a few years. Also, they redesigned the bonnet scoop (opened it up) on later cars to aid cooling.

Personally, I'd avoid early builds, but I'm sure there are many happy owners and ex-owners.