Month: September 2012

Another day, another wait for a boat. My new MINI is still waiting for a vessel. The one that was leaving on the 25th is now leaving on the 29th so I have my fingers very tightly crossed that it makes it on that one. My car must be first in line to get on.

In other news I took Carrie to the MINI dealer for an oil change ($69 web special), took forever to get my car back (35 minutes between paying and the car coming out) and they said that my water pump has a “slight leak” that I should get looked at. Well I’m obviously not doing any major repairs before I trade it in but it better bloody well not fail before the new car comes.

This morning a person whose MINI was born the day before mine let me know that theirs had been loaded onto a ship that we hadn’t heard of until now and that had left today. So I searched for my VIN with the cargo search and here’s what I got:

It looks like it was booked on the boat but for some reason was “returned to sender”. Ugh, this order is going to take forever. I am clinging to some small hope that it is a computer error but doubtful. I just hope it wasn’t returned due to damage.

Update: Taking a look at the shipping schedules, if they use the usual carrier, there is a boat that leaves on the 25th of September and arrives in LA on October 17th. So I think I should get delivery in the October 20s. Looks like I will just miss one boat, though, that leaves on September 11th. For an extra couple of days I could have got the car two weeks earlier. Ah well.

The owner’s lounge hasn’t been updated so I can’t post any cute graphic but the kind-sounding robot on ASK-MINI told me that my car is in production with a finish date of September 12th. Maybe I’ll get my hands on the new girl mid-October?

In other news, I went over a big bump last night and the tyre warning/DSC off lights combo is back on. And then this morning the battery was almost flat when I went to start the car. Going to be a long 4-6 weeks.