When I graduated college, I lowered the driver’s window to say goodbye to someone, and the window wouldn’t come back up. It was at that point (and once I got confirmation of a post-college job!) that I purchased my ‘05 MINI.

I had wanted one since before they were available in the US, and even had little toy MINIs on my desk. I had also made a decision that no car I would ever buy would have worse gas mileage than my 1988 Accord. (30MPG hwy in case you wondered)

My Minnie (for a bit I called her Ms. Cooper, but then I realized that she wasn’t a grizzly old woman but instead a crazy party girl) just turned 1 year old, and I can’t say anything bad about her. Everything, from the ordering, to the delivery, to the first modification, to today has been perfect. All of you complaining about the heat need to live a little.. open the windows! Go faster if you’re hot! Try a car with a completely broken A/C unit and then tell me how much you are upset by the MINI (My friends used to call the Honda’s broken A/C button “accellerated combustion” for how it served no purpose but to drain my gas.)

I hope to be able to keep this car just as long as the old Honda (200,000 miles all the way baby) and every day I will love it in comparison to every single other car on the road. Maybe, when I trade it in (probably for another MINI) the dealer will say the same thing they said about my Honda: “Wow. one-touch down on the windows? In 1988? This was the future! We’re not scapping it… One of the mechanics was looking for a trustworthy “to and from school/work” car for his son.”

Anyway, I have to say that I find the A/C to be underpowered on occasion as well (and the fan is a trifle loud, though not as bad as both my A4’s were!). More annoying to me is the fact that I can only adjust the temperature in 2 degree increments…but 66 is too cold and 68 is too warm! Seriously, I want 67 degrees…

Oh, and they attribute a lot of the dealership issues to higher cost of parts and overall delay in getting parts…I beg to differ on that, and I know I’m not the only one. My experience has been that they just plain can’t fix the cars sometimes (hello, loose seat STILL after 11 visits?!?).

Oh, and some of the problem areas tend to recur, which is a bit of a concern when one is getting close to the end of their warranty (I.e. bad steering rack was replaced, new one is now going bad after only 5k miles).

I love my Mini SO much, but I’m SO fed up with the annoyances (and I just don’t have any ‘fight’ left to keep going after the service department…I don’t have the time, either). I’m probably going to get an Acura TSX…almost as tossable but much more refined (like a smaller, cheaper A4 but with an Asian flavor…no character, though). CD

I would guess the newer MINI models are improved, but I’m still amazed that a/c one of the things BMW clearly missed out of the box in an otherwise well-engineered car. I should point out that I am able to cope because I’m fortunate to garage my MINI at home and have covered parking at work – so it rarely sit parked and baking in the summer sun unless I am running a weekend errand. Since I start my journeys with car parked in the shade the aftermarket tinted windows help the a/c to perform at a C+ or B- level.

I read the Road and Track article in the print mag (Challenger on the cover looks killer!) and I would say that they concentrate mostly on the early problems, but that the drive and attributes of the MINI made up for the problems, and that the recent MINIs have few problems. Overall it is very positive, something I am happy to show to my customers.

I grew up on that end of the country, about 3 hours east of Dallas, and I have yet to see a car A/C that handles the full glory of gulf-coast summer. And actually, if you’ve got a car with an opaque or coverable sunroof, it really helps cool the car off – let the hot air out of the top of the car as the A/C pumps colder air into the cabin. But in really hot temperatures, there’s only so much heat that’s going to transfer from the evaporator into the ambient air. The heat pulled out of the coolant from expansion can’t bled off well enough for the A/C to be efficient at all – no matter who made it. And it isn’t just cars, it’s a struggle to keep your house cool some days.

I’ll be really interested to read this same survey three years from now with all the newer-build MINIs as seasoned veterans and the very first reports on the R56.

A lot of things were left out of the article and survey. Nice read but wasn’t impressed by it, honestly.

The sunroof mesh complaint puzzles me as I have driven both cars in extreme heat and humidity (Florida, Dallas, Palm Springs) and have only found the AC lacking in Palm Springs when the temp was 120º+ but we all have diff levels of comfort.

To me uncomfortable is blasting through the Valle de Trindad in a class 12 MiniMag buggy with the outside temp 120º and even hotter inside while competing in the Presidente 500 in Baja. Uncomfortable yes but some kinda fun!

It would have been nice to see the results of this survey if more ‘04-’06 models were included. Reliability would have certainly been less of an issue.

Gotta love the Ferrari comment, too…95% of the fun at 10% of the price :)

A friend asked me, what if I could buy another car tomorrow, what would you get? Then I thought, hey, I want exactly the same car as I have now, down to the last specs :)

I did have the maximum % of metalized tint applied to the sides and rear to prepare for the summer. The 8% Limo tint on the sunroofs seems like it is a good thing too, but I’ll reserve judgement until July-August.

I’ve never been to Texas, but I assume there are few cars that could handle 100+ degree heat very well. We get some pretty hot days here during Chicago summers – 90+ degrees with high humidity and while it generally doesn’t get “hang meat cold” in the car it is comfortable enough to drive around (after a reasonable time of cooling of course).