For example, someone just driving a year or two, not much in the way of no-claims wants to get their pride and joy, but doesn't know a facelift from a Pepper Pack, or what difference there is between a First and a Cooper.
So how about we tell these fine folks what we have found out about our own cars, what we did to them that turned out brilliantly, what was a complete waste of time, and what we would go for next time.
I will kick off with my Cooper and if anyone else wants to add to it please do.
2006 Cooper, non-supercharged. It was Hyper blue, with a white roof and was a fabulous colour to go for. It came with the Chilli pack, which meant the much better sports seats, 16inch alloys (ooh aah), fogs (hardly used them), three spoke steering wheel, trip computer, and a few bits of extra chrome on the outside.
Bought without haggling right out of the showroom (I was a bit excitable at the time, sorry), it looked brill!
Observations while owning it: fast round town, suspension which handled bumps well and could be nice and playful when being a bit mischievous in the bends. Steering control was phenomenal, best ever in a car I have driven. Through the bends it was fast enough, providing the engine was kept spinning and not too much braking. Ah yes, brakes. Not the best in the world, when you start to work them. Faded big-time on some downhill sections on a couple of our runs. Not good, so I updated them to the ones from the 2007-on Cooper S. This was a really easy job, even for someone who is confident but not a mechanic.
The car came with run-flat tyres on those lovely alloys, and they were fine so long as the road did not have a sniff of moisture on it. At that point either the front would let go, or the rear, and pretty damned quickly too. So these were dumped and on went a set of Toyo Proxes, which were massively better, and less crashy as well
The power, like I said was fine, but I wanted a little more oomph and character. So on went a PlayMini cat-back stainless exhaust, a Pipercross panel filter/K&N induction kit/Pipercross Viper Induction kit (tried them all
), Iridium spark plugs, and a Superchips Bluefin remap. All of these things made some great noises, added better engine response, smoother revving etc, but never made it feel like a fireball. 90% of the time that did not matter in the slightest, as the car was so nice to drive every day, either for short trips to work, or for a spin to Cork or fully loaded to Silverstone.
For this reason, it was the perfect fun spec for my daily drive. But I always thought to myself, was a well-specced Cooper better than a base-spec Cooper S? Bar all the visual tweaks I made to it, and the small performance gains I got from it, the car could really not go any further in terms of modifications without messing with suspension kits, engine work etc. If I had bought the fast car, I probably would have STILL modified it, so I guess it was a good way to limit my spending overall.
So my take on it is my Cooper was a stepping stone car that works perfectly in town or driven fast on the twisties, but was never going to be massively quick. From anyone else's point of view do not be sucked in expecting any mods you do to make it the same as an S or a GTI, it just isn't that sort of car. And good tyres and brakes are better than a few more horses when lashing down a good road
Loved the car to bits!
I'll share about my old Classic (proper Flintstones job) later on.
A
