The date you bought the car "new" is its birthday. Up to that point, it was not your's, IMO, but was awaiting the stork to deliver it. If you bought the car used, then I would say it is the date it became your car. After all, we are talking birthdays here...not production dates. Birthdays=ownership, or welcoming items/people to one's family.
'03 MC, April, '04 [used]...9/'02 build date...[Silk Green], show car, Dragon Slayer, and occasional errand car
'06 MCS, May, '06 [new]...5/'06 build date...[Royal Grey], daily driver, weekend HPDE car, Dragon Slayer
'06 MCS, March, '13 [used]...5/'06 build date...[Pepper White], wife's car
The date I ordered it.....for us old-timers this was months before actually getting the car, would be considered the conception date. Picking up the car is the birthday.
I think of purchase, delivery, etc, dates as something more like adoption dates. If you adopt a 2 year old boy, you can celebrate his adoption date all you like but you can't say he was born the same day. Much like a car, his birthday is the day he 'exited the production line'...so to speak. :smilewinkgrin:
I realize that analogy requires a bit of anthropomorphizing but we are talking about a car's birthday.....
But on the other hand, the voyage to the dealer for the delivery prep and any option installations can be considered part of the "birthing" process.....
My 2011 MINI was produced 7/10/2010. I vaguely recall the first owner purchased sometime in mid-Nov 2010 (was on the CarFax), and I purchased/brought home 4/20/2012 (which is what brought this question up to begin with).
As said to me by another MINI owner:
When a child is born, its birthday is the day it was born, not the date its parents took it home from the hospital, right?
If that child, for whatever reason, is later in life adopted by a new family, the new family does not change its birthday to the day they adopted the child, do they?
So logic is telling me the production date...but my emotions are for the date I brought my MINI home. I'm probably just going to celebrate both.
I go by the production date, since that's the earliest date I can find in reference to my MCS. My car's birthday was 10/31/06 and I count the day I got it (3/31) as an anniversary. I just celebrated the anniversary of my first year of ownership last month.
Interesting ours was 11 years old when we found him abandoned on at a used car lot. Neglected and Abused. We took him in and gave him love and some oil. Mended broken parts. I never thought much of his life before. When it was bought and sold. I would have to say production date. What do you get a 12 year old Mini for his Birthday?
I think my MINIs birthday is 2 weeks before the Dragon because every year around that time I a spend a whole lot of money prepping the car for the Dragon.
Funny what you learn after the fact. I bought mine off MINI of GR's lot and never considered the production date. Now that I've looked it up, surprisingly the car was nearly 7 months old by the time I brought it home. It's birthday would be 11/14/2012 and we've been joined at the hip since 5/8.
