"Life's Too Short to Drive a Boring Car…

…so drive a MINI."

It's been a little over a year since I replaced Anderson, my aging 2006 MINI Cooper with Rabbit, a 2016 MINI Cooper Countryman. During that time—and despite COVID—we've had a good relationship. I have a few gripes with the car, but no real regrets over the purchase.

First off, since discovering Sport Mode, I absolutely love driving this car. With Sport Mode engaged, it seems the car shifts exactly when I would with a manual gearbox and that gives me unbridled joy. I gave up a manual transmission when I traded in Anderson, and it was a decision wrought with misgivings based on my (one) previous fully automatic vehicle. But I have to say, even without Sport Mode engaged, I haven't really missed the third pedal all that much.  In a perfect world, yes…I'd still be driving stick, but it wasn't an option at the time. As I mentioned a few posts back, Anderson was starting to nickel and dime me to death, and watching the timer tick down until a second clutch replacement would be needed, something had to give sooner rather than later. I didn't want to take on the huge financial burden of a new car—and at the time MINI wasn't producing any vehicles with a stick shift anyway, so I knew a used one would be the way I'd have to go if I wanted to keep it affordable and fun.

I also knew I wanted the Countryman for the simple reason it was becoming a pain getting in and out of the low-to-the-road 2-door MINI hatchback and the Countryman rode a few inches higher.

I found a vehicle on CarMax that matched my transmission, color, and price requirements. Unfortunately it was located in Las Vegas. They'd ship it down to Phoenix for a $100 fee that would be refunded if I purchased the vehicle, so it wasn't an unreasonable expense. I realized however this was a bit of a gamble if I didn't want the car, but with apparently no vehicles that matched my want list available locally, I was willing to at least set the wheels in motion.

The morning that we decided to drive out west to get this rolling, I made the mistake of checking out Yelp reviews on the dealership it would be shipped to before we left, and it left such a bad taste in my mouth I started looking elsewhere. (Little did I realize that Yelp reviews of auto dealerships are uniformly horrific because buying a car is a horrific experience no matter how good it may be.)

It didn't take me long to find similar cars—albeit all with a six-speed automatics—at several local dealers. We hit the nearest dealer for a test drive to determine if I could in fact make the switch to an automatic without regretting it, and four hours later I drove Rabbit off the lot. Yes, Virginia. Four hours. As I said, a horrific experience.

But it was worth it. It was love, although aspects of the "new" car did take some getting used to. Things had changed in the ten years which had passed between the time Anderson and Rabbit rolled off their respective assembly lines.

Over the past year, however, I've grown accustomed to Rabbit's quirks. There are four things that to this day drive me nuts, but I thought they were just me. Turns out they aren't. I was surprised to learn that I wasn't the only one to find these obvious flaws so annoying:

While he has a 2015 model and I don't have the reverse gear issue this guy does because mine is an automatic, the other four things he mentions do resonate—especially the lack of Bluetooth Audio (apparently correctable through a firmware update) and the position of the passenger side rearview mirror.

I also regret losing the xenon headlights I had on Anderson.

Because it's a string of DNA and a skill set I do not possess and a gut-wrenching fear of fucking something up that I can't fix, I'm not one who ever mods his cars—but I do love watching the MINI videos on YouTube that show you all the things you can do (like replacing the halogen headlights with xenon or putting in the Union Jack tail lights). If nothing else, as tempting as attempting the mods in these videos may be, they remind me of how I can and probably would fuck things up royally if I tried doing any of them myself.

They also remind me of how insanely much I love driving this brand…