Best Year to but

@clamboat late Cooper will be the best option. Low mileage even better. Reality is the Prince engine doesn’t have a long life before it needs work doing. North of 50,000 miles and you need to plan for work. Benefit of low mileage cars is that the engine is less likely to have been run without oil and coolant. So leaving you with a good base to work from. Over 50,000 you need to be confident the previous owners have checked oil and coolant regularly. Most of the engine’s failings stem from coolant issues. Several of the coolant components fail, including pump, thermo housing and link pipe. Made worse by the absence of a temperature gauge. Too many are run without coolant causing damage to the head which surfaces at some stage. Oil control rings fail causing high oil consumption and again if not checked , run low on oil causing damage to the head. When freshed the Prince engine is a good performer , just need to do the work before the effects of high oil consumption and low coolant levels set in and damage is caused.