Just wanted to introduce myself and my Chili red 05 Mini Copper S JCW. My name is Paul and I am a SoCal native. I've had my Mini ( license plate reads GO DWG GO) for a little over a year now and wouldn't trade it for any other car (I traded in my Kawasaki ZX-14 to buy it). It had 8500 original miles on it when I purchased it. It now has 25,000 miles on it (yes, I do love driving this car). I love to tweak vehicles, but this one is hard to improve on. It came with the JCW, Chrono and Sport packages. The Mini driving lights were already on the car. I added TSW 17" 18lbs wheels (vs those heavy stock wheels) and Michelin 215/45/17 Super Sports (sticky, sticky rubber) and a bottle of runflat in the trunk (good riddance to those runflats). Put a Amsoil replacement filter in the JCW air box and deleted the 4500rpm flap. Medium tint to all the windows was mandatory. And I had to add the center console for a shifting arm rest. Only repair I've had to do up to this point is replace the hydraulic motor mount. My favorite place to run this car is the San Gabriel Mountains. There is one section of twisties that runs 160 turns in 13 miles (run across the occasional Lambo, Viper, Shelby, etc on this road). The motorcyclists hate that I run turn for turn with them and quite often signal me to pass them. Ahh, life is good.