In 1995 Autocar magazine named the original Mini as its Car of the Century. Under BMC, British Leyland and Rover, that car ran from 1959, when the windows slid back and forth rather than up and down and the doors were opened by lengths of string, to 2000, when Lulu drove the last one off the Longbridge line. We don’t know if she carried on driving it home, and if so if she ever paid for it. One for the investigative TV programme makers there perhaps.
Anyway, the love that little car generated worldwide meant that the 2001-on BMW Mini, or MINI to give it its correct shouty name, was always going to have to run a gauntlet of negative comment. Some of it was justified. Early opinions of the new MINI tended to be a mix of fulminating praise and exasperation at some of the frankly weird teething troubles, one of which (Shed dimly remembers) was something to do with the headlamps blowing up and the doors falling off when you turned the steering, or something like that.
The car you are hopefully looking at here is an R53 (Mk 1) Cooper S registered in June 2006. That means it has the Chrysler/BMW-designed, Brazilian-built Tritec motor rather than the later Prince engine. You might see this as good news because the direct-injected VANOS-equipped Prince lump (shared with PSA Peugeot Citroen and built at BMW’s Warwickshire plant) earned itself a pretty patchy reputation for reliability, to put it mildly. The iron-blocked Tritec was relatively reliable as long as you stuck to the service plan and only used decent oil.
Tritec R53s from the 2005 and 2006 model years are regarded by many as being among the most reliable MINIs ever, but no doubt there’ll be some argy-bargy on the forum about the relative merits of Prince versus Tritec. Shed is happy for you to have that discussion as long as you don’t make too much noise because he needs his beauty sleep you know.
The other good thing about the first-gen MINI Cooper S of course was that it was supercharged. That was a hell of a big deal at the time. It hoisted the output of the 1.6-litre engine up to 168hp at 6,000rpm along with a handy 162lb ft of torque from 4,000rpm. Running through a 6-speed Getrag manual the S did the 0-62mph in 7.2 seconds and went on to 138mph. It sounded pretty good too, especially with a cold air intake fitted. For the performance, the official combined fuel consumption of around 33mpg was more than decent.
There were shortcomings, some of which were to do with it being short. There was next to no room in the back and the ride quality on runflat tyres was only slightly better than that of a horse-drawn beer dray. Still, the handling and grip were on point, and our Matt thinks that the ones with the Chili pack might have had an LSD thrown in. Shed’s not so sure about that but if it were true that would make this car a cool track project.
The trouble is, Shed has never been very good at working out what pack a MINI might have and what might be in that pack. He thinks a Chili R53 might have had xenon lights, manual air con, an alarm, 17-inch 5-star Bullet alloys, a leather steering wheel and half-leather seating, all of which this car seems like it might possess, but other than that he’s lost. Annoyingly, buyers like to add stuff like MSFWs (multi-function steering wheels) or indeed LSDs to their packs, muddling up the specs and ruining Shed’s peace, so now he prefers to leave this sort of thing to the geeks. The dealer’s ad doesn’t help us because much of their description either contradicts itself or is, well, gibberish.
The important part of their spiel is the bit that says all their cars are sold with a six-month warranty. With luck, you won’t need to claim on that because this car looks straight and clean. There’s a hint of scabbiness on one wheel and one door mirror has lost some of its paint. Both quirks are openly shown in the pics. Last November’s MOT had light advisories for low-tread rear tyres, a non-excessive oil leak and a rusty front spring. The mileage is 93,000 and the price is £1,795.
Returning to warranties, Shed has often wondered about inventing and then selling marriage warranties. The idea is that with one of those in your hand, If something goes wrong with your marriage you can claim against it. Shed reckons that with him as the sole judge of what constitutes 'going wrong' he’d make an absolute fortune because most peoples’ going wrong would be the same as, or better than, one of his perfectly normal days. Almost all warranty claims would therefore be instantly rejected, maximising Shed’s profit. The business might only last for a year as the amount of repeat custom would probably be low to non-existent, but by then he’d be living life high on the hog under an assumed name with the recently Horizon-compensated postmistress, in a country with a relaxed tax structure and no UK extradition agreement.
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