For sure. Word is getting around I will guarantee you that.

 

Reality is perception......(and in this case, brand perception..)

And a good deal of the parts in the Mini's are French or of UK origin.... (Hmmmmmmm....)

As for Porsche, you have NEVER seen QC like they have on the Porsche line! (I was BLOWN away....) not to mention for 99%+ of the Porsche owners out there the 911/Cayman etc is not their daily driver...it is a weekend car, and their is a certain mentality in the exotic/performance drivers mind...when it comes to taking it in to the shop, waiting on parts, service issues etc....

My favorite shop now refuses to service BMW's (he is a VERY well known German Car mechanic/performance shop....) The reason being...the owners are RUDE, obnoxious, and have unreasonable expectations...(These are ALL daily drivers....and the owners expect PERFECTION, and the car DONE not a moment later than promised!) His Porsche clientèle aren't like that.....cause they understand performance mods takes time, and sometimes parts are late, etc...

But if Mini is going to ask for OVER MSRP (I have seen dealerships asking +2K) and offer up no discounts, etc....and try to brand themselves as a PREMIUM Car Company..then they will REALLY need to man up, and treat their QC/Customer Service issues accordingly....

Hyundai has been trying to shrug this market perception off for 20+ years now....and now they offer 100K warranties, etc etc......the cost of screwing up initial quality can haunt you for AGES!

(If you run with the big dogs, ya gotta **** up tall trees!)

 

Spot on. When ever anyone mentions Hyundai, my first thought is "crap cars", dispite making significant gains over the years and many of my friends raving about the latest batch of cars (genesis coupe for example). MINI should take this seriously as getting pigeon-holed as poor quality expensive cars is not a good position to be in.

 

I'm sorry but I found his interview to be very condescending, the issues with my car which started 2 days and 600 miles after I bought it had nothing to do with getting "Used" to a new quirky car.

So far after only 13,600 miles and a little over 1 year of ownership, I've had the MAF (car went into limp mode), flywheel, and the clutch replaced, not to mention the entire inside of the car torn apart to find a flooding problem. Those were the big things, there were other things but those were minor and not worthly of mention, all told my car has been in the shop around 50 days.. Not good..

I'm a MINI owner, but I've been a BMW, Toyota and Honda owner too, I have never complained about my other cars and I'm the same person with those cars as I am with my MINI, probably more so with the BMW's...

I can honestly say I've never had a warranty issue on either of my Toyotas, just brought them in for normal maintenance, and had more than 100,000 ea in both of those cars. My Honda had 1 warranty issue when I first got it and put 350,000 miles on it. My first BMW had 2 minor warranty issues in the first year but after that nothing and I had that one for 300,000. My current BMW I've had 1 minor warranty issue so far, after 4 years that's it.

My MINI has been in the shop more times than I can count with all major warranty issues. If the majority of people in the survey are like me, then I can see why MINI is at the bottom of the list.

Don't get me wrong I love my MINI so much so that I'm going to get another one, it's just sad that there are so many problems with this awesome car.

 

+1

 

Thanks....yeah 2011 that's about right for my next MCS.

 

Best quote of week! LOL
Outstanding

I remember, many years ago, when Porsche / Audi / VW were lumped together at single dealerships. What a fiasco. Basically the Porsche / Audi crowd now had the same techs and SAs as the VW. I've owned VWs and dealt with 2 or 3 horrible dealerships. I pitty anybody how'd plunk down $100K+ on a car and have to deal with a VW dealership. Even now the Audi/VW mix is not a good combination.

Don't know what that has to do with MINI but I just wanted to give my $.02 worth today

 

Thats the way it is in my town. Porsche, Audi and VW all in ONE SMALL building At least Mini requires its own separate building

 

Same here with regards to VW, Audi and Porsche but my Mini dealer doesn't have a separate building. It's part of the BMW building.

 

Hmmm.....I really thought it was a requirement to have a separate building? Our BMW dealer built a awesome building for BMW's and then a year later built a huge building right next to it. They said it was for used cars? It is now known it was supposed to be a Mini dealership, but they have such a bad rep., the BMW dealer, that they cant get a Mini dealership yet. I hope they do though, now that my wife has a new Mini

 

In August, we're getting a new Mini dealership (Hallelujah!) 45 minutes away instead of 3 hrs. And they will have a separate building...very nice too. Just the opposite situation...excellent, top-tier BMW dealer gets the Mini dealership. So, maybe it's a requirement now...if you want a Mini dealership you have to build a new building.

 

Check this out, its a rendition, but this is what it looks like, and they said it was for used cars

 

Wow pretty nice used car lot...

 

My jaw just about hit the floor when he said "They may need adjustment ... would you love your wife more if she was perfect from day one?"

Where is he from, Stepford?

 

I think Lexus owners are the type to say "a car just takes me from point A to point B". They are not car people or driving people at all.

 

When I found my first Mini 3 years ago I read a lot of posts about their quality and issues. At that time it seemed there were a significant number of "lemons" out there. And there were a large number of great cars with no problems at all. So I bought a used one and checked all service records. There had been no issues at all, only one oil change in a year and 15000 miles.
Just last week, after 80000 miles I sold that '05 S Convertible. During the entire time I owned the car I had service one time. Just before the warranty ran out the top quit working. I took it in and it was repaired in a couple of hours. Other than scheduled oil changes and two sets of tires I did nothing to the car. I never replaced the battery or brakes or headlamps. It was a great car and I was entirely happy with it.
I sold "The Coop" because I had ordered a new one. And, yes, I was concerned about problems with a new one. But since I had such a good experience with "The Coop" I didn't worry about it too much.
On day three, with 224 miles on it, the check engine light came on. When I took it in I was told it the fuel cap hadn't been tightened correctly. They put the cap back on, reset the computer and sent me on my way.
So here goes hoping that was the problem (umm, I hadn't opened the cap, the car had been driven three days, 224 miles after it was filled with fuel, I did take the cap off and carefully put it back at their suggestion after the light came on) I don't deal well with problem vehicles!

 

but Porsche owners aren't that way, and they manage to score much better. Saying that Mini owners are different is just a cop out. There are too many issues with the cars compared to the industry averages. That's bad. The fact that the industry averages are a very low number is good.

Matt

 

Man, not just last, but out there...

I love my 06 MCS. and remember reviewing the consumer reports for it. the 06 MCS was "dialed" in, compared to the previous versions.

Oh well, knock on wood. Mine is motoring along.

 

I think that Porsche dealers generally bend over backwards to fix all the ills of their cars w/o questioning the owners. Porsche has quite liberal guidelines about accepting warranty work from their dealers. That helps alot to get great survey results but it is not real initial quality.

Porsche was near number 1 in initial quality during the days of the then new cayenne 2003-2004-2005. Imagine that.

Some Mini dealers can blame the owners for problems and tend to not want to fix things if they can get away with it. That is the perception I get being at the shop at least 8 times in the past year.

 

I don't think being lumped into the same building as BMW is such a bad thing. Their standards are a tad higher than VW (IMHO). Here the MINI dealership is owned by a local BMW dealership as well but they're planted in totally different parts of town. You wouldn't even know they're related 'cept when you get a loaner there are a few Beamers sprinkled in. 2 weeks ago I had a new 1-Series for a couple of days. I used to think that was a small/managable BMW, but after driving Spike the 128 felt like a bus. Nothing wrong with the vehicle, just not what I was used to any more. Sorry I digress

 

I wonder if he's married, and if so, what is wife thot of the remark?

 

The first Lexus owner I ever met had already owned the same Lexus for 8years and was extremely unhappy that the leather was starting to crack on his seats. I think you underestimate Lexus owners' expectations.

 

Looks like Mini has indeed gone downhill over the years. You can view the data back to 2005 by looking at press releases on the corporate side of JDPower: http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases

Just search by year for "Initial Quality Study"

Back in 2005, Mini had 130 problems and has always been in the bottom quarter of all makes, with the likes of Land Rover. In 2009, Mini got worse!

My take is they think the brand is all about the cutesy image, rather than the experience. Like others, I have had wonderful brand experiences with Japanese cars (Acura), but frustrating problems with Mini. They have dealers which support the manufacturer and those who don't even mention the manufacturer support programs in their ads for used cars (Mini Vaughn West, near Toronto Canada). Lack of dealer consistency is one sign of the brand problem, but same goes for the problems -- nobody seems surprised at all the woes!

 

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/mini.html

Read some other stories about mini problems. Maybe Mr. McDowell needs to get on the web.

 

Wow, the Lexus stories are pretty interesting at that site as well. I especially like the one about a class action lawsuit because their engines are full of sludge.