Tips on Filling Out Your MINI Cooper Order

Now that you’ve spent some time thinking about your ultimate goals, and how fast you want to get there, we can help you sort through the choices you’ll need to make before you sign the order form and start counting the days until your very own MINI is produced, shipped, and prepared for you to pick up at the dealer.

Cooper or Cooper S?

The first buttons you’ll have to click are the ones labeled Cooper or Cooper S. This is actually pretty simple. Since the Cooper S costs only $3000 more than the Cooper, and offers many more features and capabilities, we think it offers the best value for money.

For starters, the Cooper S has a 6-speed manual transmission. That difference alone, in almost anyone’s book, would justify the extra money. You’re probably already pretty sure that an automatic transmission is for people who want to use their right hand for something inane like applying make-up. You already know that a quick hand on the gearshift and a good foot on the clutch separate the motorists from those people who buy a car for transportation. And you get the bolstered sport seats thrown into the bargain.

But it isn’t only the MINI Cooper gear shift and sports seats that you’ll be able to look forward to. It’s all the extra horsepower potential lurking in the pages of the go-fast catalogs that separates the Cooper S from the perfectly-adequate-for-other-people Cooper. Yes, the Cooper can be made to go faster. But by the time you’ve installed everything possible, you will have spent more than the $3000 you saved, your Cooper will have reached its maximum horsepower potential at just about where the Cooper S starts, and you’ll still have only one tail pipe on the back.

By comparison, with a Cooper S, you start with a car that is already pretty quick, and after that the sky’s the limit. So click the button marked Cooper S and we’ll move on.  (For those of you who already bought a Cooper before you bought this book, don’t worry. Keep on reading and we’ll give you all the tips we have on how to get the most out of your Cooper. If you decide you want a little more performance, we’ll discuss modifications that will give your Cooper approximately the same horsepower as the standard Cooper S.

And if you have to drive under conditions where an automatic transmission makes sense, the Cooper automatic still allows you to upshift and downshift on your own, so you can learn to upshift and downshift at the most efficient shift points.

And we can guarantee, if you learn to be a better driver as we’ll teach you along the way, you’ll be able to beat many of those Cooper S owners who think that they can buy fast lap times with their credit card.)