MINI's part 2

Found out more over lunch.

My local mechanic thinks that the brakes on a MINI are like any other brakes. And some transmissions require special manufacturer created tools to drain/flush. VW & Porsche for example.

Tires is where the rubber met the road so to speak. The standard MINI tires are 16" run-flats in a non standard size. They cost about $1200 for four and last about 30K miles. By contrast, my Subaru's tires, for 4 would cost me about $680 and they would come warranted for 80K miles. I've gotten more like 120K from the current set. The absolute base MINI hardtop has 15" air tires in a non-standard size. They also only come in performance tires while the run-flats come as all-season if you want them to. However, 4 15" tires cost only about $570.

What that boils down to is that the MINI has twice as expensive tires that will need changing twice as often in all likelihood which means the overall tire cost is 4 times as much as the Subaru. With no run-flats, the MINI costs only slightly less than twice as much as the Subaru assuming the tires wear as fast as the run-flats.

I wonder if you can put 15" tires on the convertible after you get one.

Some one please explain to me why you'd build a car with great fuel economy... 28/36 but not have an economy variant. Why would you think that folks who are willing to pay for all the costly brakes, tires, and whatever else would care? If you have the gold to pay for the maintenance, you have the gold to pay for a car that gets 15/22 in MPG. If you car about the cost of fuel, you might also be shopping for some other economy features. I'd think MINI would at least have 1 car pitched to the economy minded.

Instead they have a car which over 100,000 miles will save about $3,000 in gas over the Lincoln MKZ. They then turn right around and have the same car eat $3,800 in tires, another $3,000 in brakes, and who knows what else. It obliterates the illusion of gas savings.