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While no new car can be considered an actual investment many of us have always believed the MINI is one of the best buys in the automotive world.
Now that notion has been proven correct: the MINI Cooper has just been named to have the highest retention rating of all new vehicles by N.A.D.A. Here's the BMW/MINI press release:
Woodcliff Lake, NJ, April 11, 2003 … The MINI Cooper has scored highest in the N.A.D.A official Used Car Guide Value Retention Ratings for model year 2002 vehicles. The MINI Cooper listed a 117.06% value retained and beat out the Acura MDX (102.91%) and the Porsche 911 Carrera Cabrio (102.69%).
Full details can be found at www.nada.com. N.A.D.A. is the National Automobile Dealers Association. N.A.D.A. Appraisal Guides is the worlds largest publisher of value guides and has been an industry leader for over 69 years.
So as it turns out the MINI is a great choice for more the driving dynamics.
<p>Before the NADA article (Thanks for sharing it by the way), I knew that the MINI Cooper enjoys ones of the best resale values not only in its class but among other high rollers in the automotive market. According to the Automotive Leasing Guide (www.alg.com), the MINI is expected to retain 60% of its original value after 4 years of service, which beats the residuals on the current '03 Mercedes Benz CLK. Indeed, the NADA press release confirms the fact that the MINI appears to be not only the best buy in the market but also one of the wisest investments when it comes to depreciating items such as cars.</p>
<p>Now the question is….which model has higher resale value? The regular Cooper or the Cooper 'S'??</p>
<p>Cheers!</p>
<p>Since MINI/BMW is well aware of the high residuals in the MINI Cooper I hope they will make an attempt to keep production limited to about 20K to 25K cars per year slated to the US market. I also hope MINI resists the temptation to sell everyone they make for the sake of bringing up sales and profits.</p>
<p>The exclusivity factor currently enjoyed by the MINI plays an important role when it comes to its superb resale values.</p>
<p>Looked what happened to VW's new Beetle and Dainler-Chrysler's PT Cruiser when they decided, instead, to sell everyone they could possibly make thus flooding the market and negatively affecting their long term resale values. Now you can get Beetle's with 0% financing and PT Cruiser's with rebates galore. Also I see these cars on every corner. I don't want that to be the case with the MINI. It seems that BMW has wised up and not followed in VW's and DCX's footsteps.</p>
<p>I totally agree with Frank here. BMW/MINI has said in the past the MINI will be a “premium” small car and that it wants to keep it's numbers at certain levels year after year. Whether that remains true once the convertible and other variation are out will be interesting. As far as depreciation between models I would expect the MCS to hold up a little better over the long run. That being said there are those out there that swear a supercharged car is inherently less trouble free than a naturally aspirated one – thus it's worth will suffer. I'm not so sure I believe that rational though.</p>