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So I dropped the 530i off this evening at my local BMW main dealer for its MOT (A month early.. just incase) and some warranty work.
And I left with... a 2006/56 MINI Cooper with half leather.
I've only done 15 miles in it, of which 13 were with a passenger who probably wouldn't take kindly to total hoonage so for now you'll all have to make do with first impressions.
It feels... suprisingly cheap. Some of the plastics are what you would expect from a BMW product, solid and nice to feel. But unfortunately, far too many of them are cheap and nasty. Ditto switchgear - it's quite odd, half the switchgear feels excellent - I particularly like the old-skool flick switches for the windows, DSC etc, but some of it feels absolutely awful - the indicator stalks are just cheap and nasty. It also has an annoying rattle coming from somewhere. It is 2 months old.
The ride is... quite firm, as it's a Cooper on 17's. I've no idea whether this means it handles well yet as throwing it around will come tommorrow, but for normal driving, its quite annoying. It's joggly and doesn't feel planted at speed. You do 70mph and it feels like its going a lot faster - people who moan about 100mph being an insane speed must all drive MINI's.
The performance... is suprisingly poor. I was expecting it to feel quite decent - it's a Cooper so it apparently does 0-60 in 9.1 seconds, but this is not what I have found. It feels very gutless and slow so I would imagine you have to absolutely cane it to get the best from it - I'll report back on that tommorrow.
So, it's totally rubbish then? Well no, not really. It does have its good points, and I would imagine people not used to E39 5 Series probably wouldn't have commented on most of the bad points.
Whats nice about it? Well, it certainly looks funky for a small car and the interior is retro-tasticlly cool. The big speedo, cool rev counter pod, half leather seats - it feels nice. It's a nice place to be, as far as small cars go. Most of my criticisms apply to other small cars in equal or greater measure - Corsa is a light year more nasty in every respect - so I really need to be careful I'm not drawing most of these criticisms by virtue of the fact I stepped out of a 530i and into a MINI Cooper. Interestingly, this car feels no 'newer' or no 'older' than mine - quite interesting given this is 2 months old with about 1k on the clock yet mine is almost 5 years old with 140k on it.. you'd say they were a similar age/mileage if you had to guess and didn't know about BMW styling.
More info, and pictures, tommorrow.. But so far, I'm not keen.
And I left with... a 2006/56 MINI Cooper with half leather.
I've only done 15 miles in it, of which 13 were with a passenger who probably wouldn't take kindly to total hoonage so for now you'll all have to make do with first impressions.
It feels... suprisingly cheap. Some of the plastics are what you would expect from a BMW product, solid and nice to feel. But unfortunately, far too many of them are cheap and nasty. Ditto switchgear - it's quite odd, half the switchgear feels excellent - I particularly like the old-skool flick switches for the windows, DSC etc, but some of it feels absolutely awful - the indicator stalks are just cheap and nasty. It also has an annoying rattle coming from somewhere. It is 2 months old.
The ride is... quite firm, as it's a Cooper on 17's. I've no idea whether this means it handles well yet as throwing it around will come tommorrow, but for normal driving, its quite annoying. It's joggly and doesn't feel planted at speed. You do 70mph and it feels like its going a lot faster - people who moan about 100mph being an insane speed must all drive MINI's.
The performance... is suprisingly poor. I was expecting it to feel quite decent - it's a Cooper so it apparently does 0-60 in 9.1 seconds, but this is not what I have found. It feels very gutless and slow so I would imagine you have to absolutely cane it to get the best from it - I'll report back on that tommorrow.
So, it's totally rubbish then? Well no, not really. It does have its good points, and I would imagine people not used to E39 5 Series probably wouldn't have commented on most of the bad points.
Whats nice about it? Well, it certainly looks funky for a small car and the interior is retro-tasticlly cool. The big speedo, cool rev counter pod, half leather seats - it feels nice. It's a nice place to be, as far as small cars go. Most of my criticisms apply to other small cars in equal or greater measure - Corsa is a light year more nasty in every respect - so I really need to be careful I'm not drawing most of these criticisms by virtue of the fact I stepped out of a 530i and into a MINI Cooper. Interestingly, this car feels no 'newer' or no 'older' than mine - quite interesting given this is 2 months old with about 1k on the clock yet mine is almost 5 years old with 140k on it.. you'd say they were a similar age/mileage if you had to guess and didn't know about BMW styling.
More info, and pictures, tommorrow.. But so far, I'm not keen.
)
