Reliability be damned — we’re here to have fun. And when you’re in the used market for something fun and relatively inexpensive, then you can’t go wrong with a 2000’s-era Mini Cooper. Tommy picked up this 2010 example for just $6,000, and it even has the John Cooper Works package to give it a bit more grunt to boot. If you’ve been following TFL over the past few weeks, you’ll also notice that Roman bought a 2013 Mini JCW GP, which is one of the most hardcore, track-focused Minis around. However, thanks to a dealership called Trophy Motors in Texas pulling a fast one during the sale, it’s a much bigger problem child than we were expecting.
So, the question with this 100,000 Mini is whether Tommy managed to score a better deal in the long run.
For those of you who are curious, this Mini has a turbocharged 1.6-liter engine under the hood, mated to a six-speed manual transmission. Thanks to that JCW package, it manages around 200 horsepower. Stock, the Mini Cooper S from this era put out 172 horsepower, but that’s not terrible considering the car weigh around 2,700 pounds. It’s certainly not the most practical car in the world, but as far as quirk and character is concerned, it manages to punch well above its weight, at least in our opinion.
But it’s a POS! It’s going to break, don’t you know that?
Naturally, with these sorts of videos there are a fair few of you who quickly draw attention to Mini’s reliability compared to, say, a Toyota Corolla. To some extent, that’s true, but the Corolla also isn’t as much fun. Until Toyota actually brings us a Corolla hot hatch — praise be they’re supposedly working on it right now — it can’t hold a candle to the Mini Cooper S in sheer, unadulterated fun.
There are a couple points to consider when buying any used car as well, let alone a Mini. This example does have 100,000 miles on the clock, and it is a decade old. Inevitably, things will go wrong. If you buy a 2013 Mini JCW GP that’s been ridden hard and put away wet, a lot of things are going to go wrong. However, if you budget the work it takes to keep the car running into your purchase, then it won’t be such a huge shock when those repair bills do come.
Fortunately, looking at the comments to the video above, most of you seem to like this one. We’ll have plenty more Mini content coming soon, including drag races, hot laps and more. Stay tuned for that!
