That in mind, when I started driving at 16, I paid about $5,000 a year for insurance. Now, at age 21, I pay about $1300. Most people with max insurance coverage in the states pay between $700 and $1000 for coverage annually. $500 for insurance really isn’t all that much at all.

Here in the UK, driving is slightly more expensive than over in the US. Not only are the cars more to but in the first place, but our petrol’s around £4-£5 a gallon and car tax is going up and up.

Oh, and for just fitting a different exhaust and not letting the insurance company know – that’s all well and good until you have even a minor prang. Insurance companies here will find anything to get out of paying up. Put alloys on instead of steel wheels and it’s “more desirable to theives” and funnily enough, no payout even if you’ve had an accident and it wasn’t even stolen. There’s also a hefty fine for not having valid insurance.

It may only be me concerned about this, but if I put an £18k car in a ditch, I don’t want to find I have to write it off because I changed the wheels!

Main things that I like about it, 2K for a performance upgrade may be a little steep, but it allows mini to directly compeate with aftermarket mod’s. It also gives Mini dealerships a chance to sell a upgrade package at a later point after customers relieze they want better performance. I am just wondering how they will seperate a stage one from a stage two JCW now.

Putting 7 Lb-Ft of torque in perspective; it’s the difference between a cool autumn day and a warm summer day.

—>robbie: The reason JCW got 20 more bhp is because they didn’t pull the torque down as much after 5000 RPM like the stock MCS. Whereas the stock MCS only has 138 Lb-Ft at 6500 RPM, this proposed JCW kit will have about 153 Lb-Ft at 6500 RPM, with 190bhp from 5500 to 6500 RPM [similar to how the stock MCS has 170bhp from 5500 to 6500 RPM].

Above 5k RPM is the only place the JCW kit will make any real world improvement.