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Potentially rare mini died on me

797 Views 8 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  Dan_in_WA
I think I have a rare mini but I'm not too sure and I just want to make sure I'm not getting screwed over. I have a 2014 MINI cooper S paceman with the John Cooper Works package. Has been a great car, we've owned it for about 8 years and it only has 69k miles on it. Yesterday, the turbo had what the mechanic described as a catastrophic oil return failure and started jetting oil all over the road for about 100 yards before the engine threw a rod into the oil pan. I've gotten several estimates to replace the engine coming in at around the $9-12k range which means its no longer worth it for me to keep this car. At first I was just concerned with making sure I was at least going to get something out of it, but now I'm concerned its gonna sit in a junkyard and rot. So I guess I have a couple of questions:
1. Is this car as rare as I think it might be? (less than 100 in the states is the last estimate I was able to get from the MINI dealer)
2. If it is, is it worth going the extra mile to make sure it goes to someone that is going to take care of it instead of scrapping it?
3. What would you do if you were in my situation?
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Man, that's unpleasant! Just a thought - have you considered importing a replacement engine from the UK/Europe/Japan?

Pretty sure I'd prefer to get it going again. Then again, what's the real market value like in the US?

If it's to keep then resale value is less of a thing ...

(I know, not much help as a response!)

Paul
There are a few engines floating about for the Paceman S - dug one up in the UK:

Mini Cooper S R56 LCI R60 R61 184HP Bare Engine N18 N18B16A New Timing WARRANTY | eBay - 1916 GBO or circa 2400 USD. Bizarrely, when I use a US address, price went up to 2299 GBP / 2875 USD ... no idea where a $475 difference appears from ... it's not the shipping cost!

Had a look at their shipping estimates to the US and those showed up as circa 499 GBP / 625 USD.

No idea what the duties are to import said, but assuming (!) 50% on top of the combined engine+shipping, that'd be 4500 USD or so.

Of course there are also people like this - SWEngines ...

Ok, time for me to stop rabbiting on here ;-)

Paul
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