UKPylot’s MINI Blog

Last night I went to Borders bookstore to get a copy of the Reader and ended up flicking through some of the ‘car guide’ magazines to read their capsule reviews of the 2005 MINI. Almost all of them said that reliability was way below average and at first I was indignant, but then I thought about it, and all the problems I’ve had with mine and I realise they are probably right, at least as far as my experience goes. Its interesting that my perception of the car’s reliability is so tainted by my fondess of the marque.

Today I used the online configurator to spec out and price a new S convertible, looked great in purple with black bonnet stripes. I could afford it if I sold my Jeep (which I plan to do anyway) and traded-in my current MINI. Its tempting.

Three days into my auto-up enabled windows and I love it! It is so handy to be able to close them with such ease. If you don’t already have the circuit, get on to Ian at GBMini and order before he stops making them.

On the way over to San Diego this morning, stopped at the Border Patrol checkpoint and was halted. Said hi to the officer and he motioned that I needed to talk to the officer at the passenger window. Thinking that I’m about to get that cavity search I always wanted, I put the window down, say hi and he tells me that I am driving the wrong colour MINI, it should be a “grey” one, then he smiles and points to a silver S sitting in the staff car park. I laughed, told him that red is best and sped off before he could even think about putting on the gloves. So… all you would be immigrants to the US of A, get a grey MINI if you want to get that Green Card.

I love my MINI’s optimism: last week I had driven about miles on a new tank of petrol and the trip computer was forecasting a range of 514 miles which would have given me about 600 miles on one tank!! Given that I have never gotten more than 350 miles, I wonder just what she is inhaling sometimes….

I love my XM Radio but recently I had to change most of my preset stations as they were getting real blah, the rotation isn’t quite large enough on some. But a couple of the new ones are real good- U-Pop and Worldzone on 29 and 100.

But I have a dilemma: now I have both an XM radio and an iPod for playing music in the car. My MCS is a 2002 model with the radio that has no auxillary input (still amazes me that) so for the XM I am using the FM transmitter method of receiving. The sound is ok but the talk radio stations and any chat is mostly too muffled to understand. Do I go the same method for the iPod, or should I get a new head unit completely and get a much cleaner sound? And is there way to get both plugged into the same unit?

When I was waiting to pick up my MINI a year ago, a fellow MINI-owner in the lounge told me that I would get tired of people asking me “so what does it run?”. And he was right, not a week passes without at least one person coming up to me and saying ‘so, what does that car run’. The obvious answer to the question is premim unleaded but, no, the question that is being asked is really how much does the car cost. Maybe its a Brit/US thing cos no way do I get that from the actual words that are used. So my answer: it runs pretty damned fine.

I’ve recently given up on the automatic air conditioning. The temps out here now are firmly in the low 100s and rising so I want to get cold air on me when I want it, not when the MINI thinks its a good time. I do like the auto a/c but right now its better to be able to control it myself.