2003 MINI Cooper Consumer Reviews

I have a love hate relationship with this car. I love the way it looks and drives. It is one of the best handling cars I have ever driven, even with only 115 hp. However, it is very expensive to service and maintain, especially if you must pay a shop. I do all my own work and bought the car needing a clutch. This is because the old owners decided to ditch it after getting a $1500 quote for the job!. I figured, how hard can it be? Well, it is Ferrari levels of difficult because most of the front of the car has to be removed for access. This includes the radiator and the front suspension subframe. Overall materials cost was around $300, and the clutch was about a third of that. As for problems, the car came with $4,000 in receipts for work that had been done between 70k and 80k miles. I bought it with 83,000 miles. This included the troublesome power steering pump, which is partly why I bought the car. Many of the known failure points had already been done, and I went through the car when I had it apart and did the power steering lines, front struts, 4 wheel brake job, rebuilt the transmission, strut mounts and bump stops, one ball joint, fuel filter and a complete fluids change. It is important to note that some fluids are specialty items such as the coolant, power steering fluid (made by Pentosin) and transmission gear oil (BMW wants $100 but I used Redline MTL for $50). These were $100 of the clutch job cost. All totaled, I think I had $1500 in this phase of work just to make it reliable enough to drive (I paid $1900 for the car). Unfortunately, it has had other issues. During the summer, the air conditioning decided it was not sure if it wanted to be heat or A/C and the blend door actuator would randomly switch positions. I fixed it by building another controller by mixing and matching parts from my original and a junkyard replacement, and reflowing the board. It also killed the power window motor on the driver's side. A new motor was $180 because of the date of manufacture, so I used a motor and track assembly for an earlier car for $50. Luckily it was plug and play. I also replaced the radio with another one from a junkyard car because the original one had a bad volume potentiometer. I also had to buy a new volume knob for the radio at a cost of $15. It is very important to note that because this is a BMW product, even the small things can have very large price tags and you have to know where to source used parts inexpensively if you don't want to go broke. As for the driving experience? Ever drive a go cart? It's about the only thing that compares. The steering is nicely weighted and very responsive. It feels as if you will never run out of grip. Most people will run out of nerve long before they will run out of car. The engine is eager and loves revs. While the car is far from fast, it isn't slow either, and is geared perfectly for the power it has. You will not lack for power in a normal urban environment. The car is also very stable on the highway. It is so stable in fact that it is quite easy to lose track of how fast you are going! The brakes are good but I would not call them great. 4 Wheel discs should stop a bit better. The seats are not supportive at all in spirited driving, and you will find yourself slipping and sliding all over the place and using the steering wheel to hold yourself in place. For a car that can corner like this, that has the sport seats option, this should not be. Also, the arm rests tend to creak a bit since there is no isolation between the armrest assembly and the plastic piece it clips to. The worst part though is the cup holders that are useless for anything larger than a can of soda or a small coffee. Even a small or value size drink from a fast food restaurant will be too tall to fit in the confined space provided. This is a very fun car and I love driving it. However, it may not be well suited to you if you do not want a driver's car and cannot do the repairs yourself. It is a complicated car and very tightly packaged so servicing costs can be very high if you pay for labor.