FS: 2008 Mini Cooper S fully prepped for D Street, $11135

[PedalFaster]

Image courtesy GotCone.com; I've paid him for a full res version, but he hasn't yet had a chance to send it to me.

I’m selling my 2008 Mini Cooper S, fully prepped for D Street. It’s a bit scruffy aesthetically, but to quote Han Solo, “she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts”. I’ve priced it with its aesthetic condition in mind, so you’d be hard pressed to find a car that’s fully prepped for any class for less money. The car was built for, and is still a dark horse in, national-level autocross competition; with the right driver it’s also capable of taking top PAX at almost any regional event.

The car’s a stripper, and thus pretty optimal for autocross or track work. The only significant options are the factory limited-slip differential, Xenon headlights, and cruise control. It doesn’t have a sunroof; it took me a long time to find a car that had the LSD but no sunroof. The car has 130k km on it; that will go up over time as I drive it to autocrosses and sometimes daily drive it.

Autocross parts currently installed on the car (not sure why the bullet spacing's so screwed up):

• Koni Sport shorts converted to double-adjustable by TC Kline. Normally you need to take the rear shocks off of the car to adjust them, but I had extensions made that allow adjustment without removing the shocks first. Bought new in March for $3300 (maybe a touch less, since I think that price included shipping).
• John Cooper Works Tuning Kit. Adds 17 hp and 8 lb. ft., bringing the total up to 189 hp and 185 lb. ft., which according to my calculations should make the car about as fast as a WRX in a straight line. The kit consists of an exhaust that sounds pretty good, a revised air intake, and an ECU tune. Bought new in February; costs $2250 new plus labor, since the tune’s only installable by a dealer: http://www.shopminiusa.com/PRODUCT/293/JOHN-COOPER-WORKS-TUNING-KIT
  
  
• John Cooper Works springs and front sway bar. Stiffer than stock, lowers the car by 10 mm. Bought new in February for $750. http://www.shopminiusa.com/PRODUCT/296/JOHN-COOPER-WORKS-SPORT-SUSPENSION
  
  
• Hotchkis Sport Suspension Competition Rear Anti-Roll Bar. The stiffest off-the-shelf rear bar I could find: 25 mm hollow with 3 adjustment holes. Bought new in February for $345. http://www.tirerack.com/suspension/suspension.jsp?make=Hotchkis+Sport+Suspension&model=Comp.+Anti-Roll+Bars&autoMake=MINI&autoModel=Cooper+S&autoYear=2008&autoModClar=Hardtop
  
  
  
• 2 sets of 16” x 7” Rota Slipstream wheels (8 wheels total) machined down to a DS-legal 41.2 mm offset. One set bought new this year, three of which are in very good shape and one of which has some mild aesthetic damage on the face. The other four have some curbing, gouges, and paint chips on them, but they’re still straight and true. Cheapest price I could find new for these wheels was $183 each ($1467 total) on eBay, plus I paid $200 per set ($400 total) to adjust the offset.
• 1 set of really ugly, beat up mystery wheels that aren’t legal for DS due to offset.
• Tons of tires:
• 2 225/50R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 6.5/32” of tread left
• 2 225/50R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 2/32” of tread left
• 2 205/50R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 5.5/32” of tread left
• 2 195/55R16 Bridgestone RE-71Rs with 7/32” of tread left
• 4 205/55R16 ExtremeContact DWs with 9/32” of tread left
• 3 random all-season tires with some tread left
• 3 random snow tires with some tread left

The car had a clean Carproof report when I bought it in January, and I haven’t run into anything since. :-) I’m pretty picky when it comes to cars, so I poured a ton of money into maintenance after buying it, culminating in installing a refurbished turbo in July.

I consider the car a “10 foot car”. From ten feet away it looks pretty good, but if you start looking closely it’s not very pretty. I got caught in a hailstorm driving home from an autocross in August, and as a result there’s a fairly deep dent on the roof and a bunch of smaller ones on the roof, hood, and the tops of the fenders. The previous owner had a big Joker decal on the roof which left some residue behind when I removed it. There were some chips down to the bare metal on the leading edge of the roof when I bought the car, so I removed the surface rust from them (including chipping off the surrounding paint so that I could get at any rust there) and touched them up, but didn’t get around to sanding down the paint blobs. The residue and touchup paint blobs could probably be addressed in a few hours with a rotary sander; that was my original plan and I may still get to it if I have a slow day sometime soon. There’s a tear about 6” long and 0.25” tall in the tint on the rear window, and a scratched area about 2” square in the tint of the left rear window. There are small cracks in the perforated vinyl of the driver’s seat, and in one 3” long section a few bits of the vinyl have flaked off.

TL;DR: None of this interferes with the functioning of the car at all, but you’re not going to win a concours in it.

I bought the car for $11,000 in January, and I put $8500 worth of autocross parts on it, not counting the tires, turbo, or maintenance work. I’m willing to let it go with all of the parts listed above, as well as the stock parts they replaced, for $11135.

Two other alternatives:

• I’m not expecting the car to sell as-is, so I plan to part it out in a few months. I don’t want to start that process until the car’s been on the market for a few weeks, but if someone who already has a Mini is interested in buying a significant portion of all of the parts, then I’d be willing to entertain selling them as a package. I’d be willing to include the reflashed ECU as part of a parts deal as long as I got a stock ECU back in exchange.
• I’d be willing to entertain trades for competitive-ish RWD cars in the same price range, including but not necessarily limited to:
• Hyundai Genesis Coupe
• Infiniti G35
• Mazda Miata (any generation)
• Mazda RX-8
• Nissan 350Z
• Toyota MR2 (3rd generation)

I haven’t yet taken any photos of the car since I’m not really expecting anyone to bite on this, but if you’re interested let me know and I’ll take some pics. I can be reached at [my first name][my last name]@live.com without the square brackets (my name’s in my signature at the bottom of this post).

Thanks!

[E6Cueman]

GLWS!.

[Terry Johns]

Good luck with the sale 

I see you mention springs in your list, how does that work running in stock ?

[zero10]

As a bit of a stickler for the rules but it's worth clarifying for anybody who is interested in buying it - what about the 7" wide wheels and ECU flash?  I thought both of those were also not allowed in street class.  On further thought I suppose if it came with 17x7" wheels you could use them under the +/- 1 inch rule.

[Stuart]

As a bit of a stickler for the rules but it's worth clarifying for anybody who is interested in buying it - what about the 7" wide wheels and ECU flash?  I thought both of those were also not allowed in street class.  On further thought I suppose if it came with 17x7" wheels you could use them under the +/- 1 inch rule.

Good luck with the sale 

I see you mention springs in your list, how does that work running in stock ?

I seem to remember in some Fastracks from past years that there was discussion about how these things fall under the port installed option exception. 

[PedalFaster]

Aftermarket springs and ECU tunes are not allowed in Street, but the John Cooper Works suspension (including the springs and sway bars) and engine tuning kit (including the flash) were both available for the 2008 Mini as port-installed options, and are thus legal per the definition of "Standard Part" on Page 65 of Section 12 of the SCCA rule book.

Wheel sizes in Street must match the sizes the car came with from the factory, except that the diameter can be increased or decreased by 1". The 2008 Mini was available with 17" x 7" wheels from the factory, thus 16" x 7" wheels are legal under the +/- 1" rule.

Sometime we can chat about how I actually purchased *two* replacement turbos and had the second one shipped via UPS Worldwide Expedited from the States because the first one had an OEM replacement housing instead of an actual Mini part. Or about how I had that 1.2 mm shaved from my wheels to make them rules-compliant even though no one would have noticed had I not done so. Or how, on a previous thirteen year-old car, I replaced the aftermarket stubby radio antenna that it came with with an original whip antenna to make sure I was absolutely rules compliant.

A lot of people play fast and loose with the prep rules, especially locally (not a comment specific to Calgary, but in general). I'm not one of them. And even if I was, I wouldn't post online about illegal parts on my car immediately after returning from running that car at the national championships.

[Reijo]

Great answer!  I am also glad you others asked the questions!   

This is actually an interesting study on what a well-prepared "stock"/"street" class car is.

Note that "stock", or rather "street" now, is a level of preparation ... and different cars are different due to another set of possibilities for preparation.  "Street" is not a car driven off a showroom floor ... although it could be.  Of course, then you would be grossly under-prepared for the class!   

Anyway, anyone want a National-level D-Street class car?   This would be a good choice!   

Reijo

[zero10]

Thanks for clarifying!  I figured it was worth asking for anybody who was thinking of buying it and also to help with my understanding of classing - it wasn't meant as an attack.

For anybody thinking of buying this car I would like to point out that the last time I saw it, at the August 14 event in Red Deer, this car placed first in PAX, and back on July 30 it placed 5th in RAW and was only 0.1s out of first place in PAX.  It is SERIOUSLY competitive.