1st Gen R53 Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: Soot on rear bumper - engine rebuild?

Going to pick up the 29k mile '05 Mini this weekend in Florida. Unmolested R53 goodness. No sunroof, red/white, with red/black interior.

 

I walked away from it. 1300 miles from home, no compression check possible, no oil on the dip stick (so even if the car does run rich, WTF level maintenance). Filthy inside, paint rubbed through from bike carrier, basically a used up car. It had all the features we were looking for, and the low rez autotrader images were inviting, but the entire picture is just wrong. Plenty more Minis out there.

 

It is actually possible the car checker didn't push the dip stick in to the bottom. I made the same mistake first time around, but it all was for the better. Just the photos from the inspector alone are reason to walk away. It really shows that there's just not enough detail in your common autotrader or cars.com image to see what is actually for sale.

Buying cars long distance is difficult, but there are pretty good tools out there. Once you have the VIN of a car, you can do the Vin decoder to know what's really under the skin, and then you run a quick free history scan at motosnoop.com (why pay carfax of the other guys when most of what they do is public record?)

We have been looking for a car for almost a year now, and more seriously for the last month. In that period I have come across many cars that were totally misrepresented, even by dealers. Just yesterday I found a nice '05 JCW in LA that at first glance looked like a nicely kept enthusiast car (with mods that are common in this crowd). Price looked almost too good for the low 50-some thousand miles. Clear title, etc - I run the VIN through motosoop and MAJOR issue detected - frame/unibody damage, title rebuild this summer. Meh.

But all of this searching will eventually lead to the right car. Since the Mini in Albuquerque didn't pan out, we found another one in the same colors (red/white), '05 MCS with 29k miles, no sunroof, red cloth/leather seats, one owner in the south, who only drove it in the month of the year she was in the south, while for the rest of the year it remained in air conditioned storage. Almost too good to be true, so we will send another inspector out to get to the bottom of this. If it checks out, it is well worth the 120% blue book asking price, which in this case is still a grand less than the oil burner JCW in Albuquerque was listed for.

 

Hauled the car home this weekend. It had never been operated outside the dry season (winter) in Florida, and never been north of Orlando, so this change of latitude was quite the shock for it:

Mini frozen over for the first time in its life

Brrr

Frosty Mini Logo

But it will have to get used to it. The trip hauling it back was smooth - nice weather, cheap gas (1.69 in IL was lowest) and my truck pulled it like a champ, so good I now don't want to sell it any longer...

Anyway - now there are two 2005 MCS in my household, and one happy teen driver who has to wait until later today for me to get the temp plates

The car is excellent, very much as represented by the owner. The only thing I found is the headliner fabric layer coming loose in front, so that needs to be re-done, plus in the frigid north, the hatch struts don't hold the lid open without a little assistance. The important stuff is all good. There's virtually no oil on the oil pan, so even the dip stick tube isn't leaking.

It is the cutest car ever made, and it feels almost new, is bone stock unmolested at sub 30k miles, and all for $8000 - suck on that, sooty Mini seller in Albuquerque!

 

so far so good on my most recent find. Owner had an '82 911 before the Mini. The Mini is the second car to a 7 series BMW. Considering another carcheck, but given the low miles, I may just gamble and drive down there with my truck, get a uhaul trailer, check it myself, last second decisions mayb, but the way this car looks right now I am going to buy it. It has full maintenance records from a dealership, with only a door opener cable replacement, thermostat housing replacement, Oxygen sensor replacement and passenger airbag sensor recall. Dealer did an inspection during that recall just a few months ago and the car came out all good.The rest is oil changes and new tires 4k miles ago. I'll keep you posted.

Peter

 

I spent $8k on my dark silver Mini (much nicer, and even in person I found nothing wrong with it), and by now I have spent over $4500 to "fix it" and get it to where I want it to be. And that engine doesn't use up a drop of oil, has always seen Mobil 1 and frequent changes, etc.

The JCW I was looking at allegedly had "brand new seat covers, looks brand new inside" when the photos from the inspector showed stains as if they were using the car to haul dead bodies around that had been in the sun too long. I was going to put in Sparco Evos anyway, but it just was another sign of lack of care, lack of honesty in the vehicle description, or just a very different concept of what looks clean and new....

I am German (passport-carrying born and raised there) and what I consider clean may be a little different, but 6 inch sized dark stains on all red cloth seats probably qualifies as filthy in most cultures.

I can afford a Mini that's far far nicer, would pick up a 30k mile enthusiast driven JCW for $13k in a heartbeat, but they are difficult to find (before somebody else snags them up). Everything I've found over the last 6 months just isn't worth buying for what people want, or it got away (perfect red/white 32k mile 06 JCW in Portland a month ago).

The car I was looking at here was almost identical, but almost 80k miles, and the condition turned out to be the opposite. Massive curb rash, dents in quarter panel, paint rubbed through from bike carrier, chips and scratches on every panel, and then the stuff that really made me back off. Even at $5k, I would probably not care to pick up that vehicle.

Now, perhaps there is black volcanic ash in the area and the car is perfect, but I am not the one who is going to gamble. Been screwed over by dealerships with alleged certified vehicles in the past that turned out to have been in wrecks, etc.

So now I am a super cautious buyer, but here in the salt belt I pretty much cannot buy a nice Mini within a day's drive to the south. The only JCW I found in Chicago that's remotely interesting had burst brake lines and all sorts of other rust related issues.

 

still listed on craigslist, but you are too late, sorry

2005 MINI COOPER S