2005 Hyper Blue Delivery Westchester MINI
Hi All,

I returned from Hawaii last Wednesday and picked up my car on Thursday afternoon! I had to make an unplanned trip up to Rochester NY on Friday and Just returned home. The my MCS has 900 miles on it already. So far all I know is that I have perma-smile from driving the car! As I mentioned in earlier posts I purchased the car from Westchester MINI in Elmsford NY, my MA was Steve Stein and he was a true pleasure to work with. I have bought 4 cars from various dealers and I will say that he went above and beyond to make this a pleasurable experience, keeping me up to date via email and sending me anything he came across to help in the research, and he is a great person above all the car stuff. The MINI was inside the prep garage when I went to pick it up and it was spotless with some surprises inside!!! HYPER BLUE IS SO beautiful, and to everyone who complained when they changed INDI BLUE, you are just jealous b/c HYPER BLUE is a much better color.Westchester MINI was more than happy to program the car the way I had wanted, auto locks at 10Mph, auto un-lock with ignition off, no DRLs, convienice items, and I even have the fuel warning beep turned on. I have read numerous posts on the internet about how horrible this dealership was/is and honestly can say someone must have an personal agenda posting that info. I have not dealt with the service department as of yet. They went out of their way with everything and I have no complaints at all and would recommend Steve and the dealership to anyone looking for a car (they are owned by BMW so they have a great allotment also).
As for the car: It is everything I hope for and more..... I am still in the break in period so driving the 650 mile round trip was long, as I had to constantly downshift and upsift to vary the speed and RPM's while constantly varying the gas pedal pressure. It was so much fun though, taking turns and accelerating. The MP3 cd player works very well, it does not list song names at all but rather works in the same matter a cd changer would, I burned a quick disk with 6 albums and I was good to go, what a bonus!. The quality of the sound and volume was also better than I previously thought, the MFSW contols were easy to use and can go from preset to preset (something previous cars I owned did not do!) or seek. Seats provided much more support and comfort than I had anticipated as well ( I really love the two tone grey/black).
My one complaint would be that the new cup holder absolutely SUCKS.... it is just junk in function, whatever is in there needs to have a screw on cap because in cornering and acceleration it is definately moving around. Also the rubber "tentacles" grab onto glass bottles so you have to fight them when lifting the drink up... annoying. New Xenons are excellent and very bright, many people complained about the looks of them earlier on; I personally like them and so has everyone else that has viewed the car.The exhaust is definately more audible than previous models as the popping on downshifts is very pronounced but not overpowering. The shorter gears do make shifting a more rapid sequence than previous but not too rapid like some other cars I have owned in the past. The added horsepower and shorter gears make the car noticibly more powerful and quicker.All of the new added interior features are GREAT improvements. I can not imagine the car without them. As a note with the cockpit chrono, it is cool and does function properly BUT the scales on the gauges are strange, they are not even at all seems to be they designed the mechanisms for Metric and then just changed the Numbers for the US instead of having seperate mechanisms. Auto A/C actually worked very well, unlike the previous car I owned. No shakes squeaks or rattles (excluding the boot cargo cover thing, the rubber little feet were originally in the wrong places, I moved them and problem solved!!). All in all I am very pleased and will take some more pictures as soon as it clears up here and I get a chance to wash her. :smile: Gas mileage so far is pretty good at 27mpg! This is just a quick little synopsis of my first few impressions of the car, hope everyone else that has taken delivery has had a good experience and to all those waiting good luck and be patient it is worth it!
-Mike (HB05MCS)
Picures from previous post on NAM: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...&postcount=337
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...&postcount=338
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...&postcount=339

 

gray leatherette looks like Space cloth in terms of color scheme - just a random thought