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I loved our Cooper S - it was good on gas, nippy as hell & super fun to drive.
People gave us the Mini Cooper wave and would always smile as we streaked past them!
We've also had a Mercedes ML500, various Volvos, a Toyota Prius and now have a BMW 335.
The Mini was probably my favorite, but we just couldn't deal with the potholes in the north east. Otherwise we would still have it.
My friend in England has a Cooper S in British racer green with the Union Jack on the roof. I was just over for a visit & had a blast racing around in it.
Minis are the best - don't be embarrassed for a second!
I can't drive big cars or trucks.... just can't. I have no concept of where they are on the road. Hubs asked me to pull his truck out of the garage and turn right -- which was next to the dumpster... and I hit the dumpster. And his truck is a smaller Tacoma.
I like my Matrix.... carries lots of stuff and is fun and easy to drive. Since it's a stick shift it's nice and zippy. I do worry though -- when I was back east in PA, I rented a small car, and I felt threatened on the roads..... next time I rented a 6 cyl. and felt safer.... but that car was getting a bit big...
Maybe small 4 cyl. cars with auto transmission aren't as zippy as sticks?
The Prius and the Corolla have interior passenger space within 1% of each other. The Corolla outperforms the Prius on the road. The price of a Prius is almost $8,000 higher than a Corolla, not even counting the interest on the financing of the car. Assume you can get 50 mpg in your Prius, and 30 mpg in your Corolla, which is what the sticker says. At $4 a gallon, you would save $8,000 over 200,000 miles.
Which means, if you buy a Prius, you pay up front for the gas you will save over the first 200,000 miles, assuming that your repair and maintenance costs are the same, and do not include about $3,000 for a replacement of the electric motor and battery pack in the Prius (guaranteed for 100K).
Only after 200,000 miles, can you even begin to hope that your Prius is starting to save you money over a Corolla.
You left out resale value. Most people sell their cars at some point.
Hybrids make great sense if there's a tax credit available.
ohh I totally forgot about this post. Well thanks all the nice comments however I traded the mini in for a diesel tdi golf vw. Thanks again everyone even the ones who were calling me drunk. I wish I was drunk, I have been sober for over 14 years. I was once a crack head. Thanks again.
I bought an '08 Cooper Clubman last August.
The very first drive I took after signing the check was out in the country, and through my own negligence, almost missed a stop sign at a blind country intersection. A pickup was halfway through the intersection by the time I knew I was in trouble, and the car was still very unfamiliar to me.
I stood on the brakes, and it went from 60 to 0 unbelievably fast, and I retained full control of the car before and during the ABS kicking in, and steered around the back of the truck while braking as hard as I could. None of my other vehicles of the past would have done that, and I would have T-boned the driver in any of them, for sure. That go-cart quickness, for me, is a big safety factor of it's own, and it would take something very huge to roll my car- without a doubt, I feel more secure in it's ability to steer around an accident and staying on all 4 wheels than in any of my past vehicles. And for me, avoidance is more important than anything- I live where there is lots of high speed traffic at relatively low volumes of vehicles, and there is a lot of wildlife (and sometimes cattle) on the roads at night.
A lot of the roads here are 2-lane, which also makes quick avoidance a necessity, and single car roll-overs here are more common than collisions. This car would spin like a top, but it would not roll over.
I'm 6'3", and the Clubman has more room than I need to be comfortable. My bro is 6'2", and does fine in the back seat. It also hauls as much stuff as most small SUV's, gets excellent gas mileage, can be parked in all the odd spots in a parking lot, and is plenty quick with the non-turboed engine. Mine has a 6-speed manual, and I think it's the best transmission for the car- the 4 cylinder engine needs to be stirred a lot for best performance.
I like American iron just fine. This is only the second import I've owned in 50 years of driving, and I seriously considered buying a Mustang before the Cooper. In all honesty, I found the Cooper more comfortable than the 'Stang I drove in all respects, and much more fun to drive.
There are some things I don't like- the controls are very eccentric and odd, and took a lot of getting used to. It's also fairly noisy at speed, all highway noise. And it's not a car I want to service myself, which is something that I've always done.
While the looks of the car appealed to me, they weren't my main consideration when I bought it. I was amazed, though, at how many folks love how it looks. Guys want to know how fast it is, and girls of all ages just think it's cute- if I was 30 years younger, it would be the biggest chick-magnet of anything I've owned, including my GTO and my Mustang. It's pretty great to be an old codger getting whoops from the kids!
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