Good Morning All,

I've had my 2010 Justa since December 2013. All Mx has been preformed at the dealer (Hendrick MINI here in Charlotte) with no complaints at all, except for $$. A trusted mechanic friend of mine recently pointed me to a small shop on the North end of town (near me) that is BMW only, this includes MINI obviously. I gave them a call, and right out of the gate they quoted me 30 bucks less for an oil change. Their website claims all the ASE certs, years of experience, etc...

Is there anything I should look out for?

Any horror stories from Mom N' Pops shops?

I don't intend to have any horror stories myself. I trust my friend's opinion and he said these guys are the best in the business. I hope to have a good review soon!

BTW: 2010 Justa, I change the oil at 10k, OBC calls for 15k.

Thanks for any tips or comments!

 

BMW only shops doesn't always mean MINI too. We are a MINI only shop, no BMW. We have several BMW shops around us that also "do MINI" and find they end up sending the cars to us once they encounter something they have never seen before.

For normal maintenance most any ASE certified shops can help you out but if something major needs to be done they may send you to the dealer.

The most important thing to ask is what parts they use. We are huge fan of everything OEM. We use MINI branded everything unless we have found upgraded parts that are better IE, Powerflex bushing.

 

See what information you can find online about them. Facebook, Google reviews, BBB, etc. Visit the shop before you need service and ask them what their capabilities are and ask to be shown around. I have already done that in my area and I still have 24k miles left on my bumper to bumper

 

I'm sorry, I should've clarified that I had called them and they confirmed that they were a MINI shop as well as BMW. The "obviously" was put there to express that I wouldn't be considering them if they didn't work on MINI. I re-read my post and understand how you took that to mean that any place that works on BMW must, by default, work on MINI as well. I can confirm that this is not the case, as I have taken my MINI to a big BMW dealer up near me and they have pointed me to the MINI dealer for anything more than a coolant top-off, or air in the tires.

Thanks for the tips, I'll certainly go take a look around their shop and ask what parts they use on MINIs.

This actually leads me to another question. I too prefer OEM, I'm hesitant to look for any other brands of oil filters. Since we're already in the discussion of preferred parts I'll go ahead and ask, is there a better choice for an oil filter other than OEM? I have a daily driver, and take care to drive smoothly, accelerate slowly and all that jazz, no need for anything close to "Performance" in my case really.

Thanks again,
Phil

 

If your friend actually takes his car there and uses this shop that is the best reference you can get.

We do run into the issue where BMW shops advertise they work on MINIs and then can't when they actually get one needing more than brakes or an oil change. There are a ton of BMW shops in Atlanta and they usually end up sending their MINIs to us when they need actual diag.
The other thing we see often is that BMW shops want to work on your car for the money, not that they actually want to work on the MINI, often the BMW guys look at the MINI as a red head step child and don't actually like the car or want to work on it. So talking to them about your car and find out if they just hate the car or like it. If a tech doesn't like a car he won't put the full effort in costing you time and money.

I just had this happen yesterday. A lady took her Cooper to a BMW shop and it had EML codes. So the BMW shop put an air filter, spark plugs, and vacuum lines on it. Obvious that didn't fix a thing and then told her it must be something really odd and take it to the dealer. Brought it here and it just needs a throttle body. Sad thing is she spent money with them and didn't need any of that stuff.