Potential new owner

[magoo]

Hi all, I'm very close to ordering a JCW, but I'm worried by a couple of things, and I'd really appreciate a bit of feedback from people who've had the car a while.
First off, it seems from various reviews (Evo's for one) where there appears to be a rather large difference between individual examples....they sent the first back, liked the second one more but still gave it a bit of a kicking, and now their long termer is praised to the hilt. Do Mini really build duffers, or would people think its maybe a difference such as car a had runflats and car b didn't?

And secondly, from reading around this (rather fine) forum, there seem to be issues with brakes, & rattling engines......are these really that common, and how responsive have people found their dealers to be at sorting things out?

I guess my biggest concern is that a car I test may well vary quite dramatically from what then gets delivered. Any thoughts from the experienced would be gratefully received

[M.O.S]

Runflats have a negative effect on ride quality, but they're not standard anymore (well as of september). You get the odd dodgy car, but at the end of the day you get that with all the mass produced cars.

The cold start rattle which is talked about had no negative effect on the engine as long as the oil was maintained and kept at the right level (or so I was told). There is a fix out for the problem now and its automatically fitted to new cars

[Wish]

We have had our JCW since June and its been a wonderful car. But so has the other 4 Mini's we have owned along the way.
Even the first 51 plate was ok, but no where near as good as the later R56's