Been toying around with selling the mini for a year now...kinda for sale, but not actively pursuing it... Well...wife got a newer SUV... Did lots of looking... And with the price of gas so so... VW selling the 2015 Jetta TDI DSG in my area for about $20,000 no cost financing for up to 72 months... Test drove it on a whimm.... And was surprised...not crazy fast, but not a slug...and 42+ mpg (yes diesel is slightly more $$ them premium fuel)...kinda got me thinking...the extra HP and tq from the new motor made it kinda fun..not blazing fast, but compared to a Honda civic/fit sized car ,(stripped/loaded) seemed to be a good comoermise between good equipment, upfront cost, and cost per mile.... The sad thing is the gen3 cars, just are not doing for me... Need something with more space, maybe a more comfy ride for highway long range cruising since it looks like I will be doing lots of that again soon... The new gti and golfs are nice, but too $$ for now.... Any thoughts? Sure vw gets lots of crap for reliability....but not sure mini folks can poke fun there....and the diesel versions do hold their value much better...and seem to run next to forever, with 15-20 year old ones still selling with 300-400k miles... Not sure the nwer motor with DEF (an added expense, about 3$ per gallon, 3 gallons every 2000 miles or so) will be that good, but who knows....seems safe to say would last for as long as I need to do 10-12 hrs drives....and the 600+ miles to a tank....might be nicer than stopping every 350 miles or so.... Thoughts? About 20,000 is kinda the hard limit, and vw is selling the tdi's for about 25% less than list....but they are getting good reviews as a "refresh".....
nice cars I have been in love with VW/Audi TDIS for longer than I have beeen into MINIs. We do some specialization in the TDI cars alongside the mINIs at Motoring Magic, so I get to see quite a few. Not a bad choice, many of the forum reliability nits are more personality things than actual issues with build quality imho. TDI Club forums are a MUST READ if youare serious though, link below. I am with you the newest MINIs are not working for me. There is an Audi A3 TDI in my future for sure! TDIClub Forums - Powered by vBulletin
Practicality Yes, making those decisions for reason and practically do get in the way of excitment. At $20,000, for a car you will put many miles on, the VW diesel does seem to be a practical choice. Your best option, IMHO, would be to buy the VW for your daily driver, high milage drives, and keep the MINI for fun rides and wrenching.
The gti would be a blast...first year on the new "MQB" MODULAR platform gets great review...but for a couple of years need a higher mpg cruiser... Thought about the 3 cylinder Ford, but decided it was a bit small and the fact it is stick only gets me back to a car the wife cannot/will not drive unless it is a DIRE emergency..... Getting to think more kindly of ford, they have been doing some great stuff as of late, but not quite ready to put my $$ down yet... As to keeping it... If I had a bigger garage, and did not need the $5500 out of it that its worth, would love too keep it....heck did the 2 car thing for a few years....had a 4x4 Tacoma, and a CRX...used the cash from the Tacoma to buy the mini, and a few weeks later got ride of the crx...it was simply gonna rust away....modern cars do better IMO when driven... So somebody will likely get a sweet running r53 that is in good shape....most important thing in the valuation seemed to be under 100,000 miles....and if I kept it till the end of summer, I would likely just that and the value would take a hit due to winter coming.... Have watched used min in prices, mini hardtops seem to closely mimic cabrio prices...not as huge a swing...but still there.....
My wife had a 1996 TDI Passat wagon, purchased new. With the usual model size inflation, it was the size of today's Jetta. It was VW's reintroduction of diesel to America (after ending the diesel Rabbit many years earlier) and the first year of TDI in North America. It handled well with good torque and was built well, but the best thing was the range. The combination of high mpg and 18.5 gallon tank meant we consistently did 600-700 miles before refilling. The sales brochure actually claimed it can do a round trip between SF and LA (800 miles) on a single tank, and I don't doubt it for freeway driving. I saw somebody say that by filling slowly, it was possible to load up an overflow tank and go 1000 miles! It ran great for about 5 years, but then started to spew a lot of fumes and smoke, which the dealer was never able to resolve. I think it was from a combination of first year TDI and low quality diesel fuel in America.
This is easy...Congrats on your new SUV from your wife...give her the MINI because it'll be new to her.