At LAST - My New Baby!!

Hello Everyone!

Well, it's finally here!!!! My new MINI! I've always wanted a new car and never got one till now! Sean and I discussed getting me a new car a couple of months ago since I was still driving a 1999 Camry that my parents had given me.

We looked at a few different kinds of cars and went to check out Mini Coopers. We test drove one and that was it! We both wanted it - BAD! This has got to be one of the MOST FUN cars to drive! Not to mention all the customizing you can do to them.

The dealer actually didn't have any Minis with the accessories that I wanted. SO, I ended up ordering my Mini. I HATE waiting for things so this was really killing me! However, I actually had an incredibly short wait. I really lucked out on the day I ordered my car and placed it just in time! I ordered on 9/20/07 and was picking up my baby on 10/24/07! Just barely over a month! Mini says that it generally takes anywhere between 6 to 8 weeks and I've talked to several people that had theirs take much longer up to 4 or 5 months!

We went and picked up the car today and of course I took a several photos and will definitely be taking several more in the future! I've got a Hypersport body kit on the car and I have a set of painted fenders coming in soon so I'll be replacing the black fenders as soon as the painted ones come in. We'll probably be putting the new wheels on the car tomorrow and we're still waiting on a bunch of stuff to come in - springs to lower the car, the rear sway bar, intake, a few other carbon fiber parts, I've got to get the windows tinted, thinking of putting a clear bra on the car to help protect the paint, etc. etc.

A funny story on the way home...the dealership is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana which is about an hour away from us. Sean and I drove there to pick up my Mini. I drove the Mini home and he drove his Suburban. I started out behind him but switched to being in front of him somewhere along the way home.

It's a two lane highway for most of the way back and at one point, I was in the left lane when I came up on a slow driving car. Well, the Mini wanted to pass it up so I put on my turn signal and switched lanes. I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw Sean blinking his lights at me with a concerned look on his face. I couldn't figure out why he was doing that until I suddenly realized I was about to pass up our exit!

I was having such a total BLAST driving the car that I didn't realize that we were almost home and I needed to exit! I quickly switched back in front of him and took the exit. Oops! LOL :oops:

Anyways, here are some delivery and post-delivery photos of my new Mini!

Thanks for reading my very long post LOL!

Celia

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini1.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini2.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini3.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini4.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini5.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini6.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini7.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini8.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini9.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini10.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini11.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini12.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini13.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini14.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini15.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/10-24-07mini16.jpg

Congratulations on your new pick up!!

I have yet to drive a Mini, but I hear good things about them.

I remember the first time I saw one, I was taken aback. Looked like a clown car. (Was an older model and the first one I had ever seen)

BUT! They have revamped it now, and it looks good!

Congrats again!

Sweet ride! :)

Congrats, and enjoy it... I've never looked at the interior of a Mini up close- that steering wheel looks like it's got a Playstation controller built in! :)

I love Minis! If I ever break down and replace my darling old Beetle, they're my first choice. And then, just when I thought it couldn't get any cuter, you have a Bodger too!

Fun?...Driving a Mini? Thats Automatic? :rofl::rofl: Clean car though...


I will give you props, your a chic that digs cars and mods them all out, that is awesome, and rare, your husband is lucky on that acct. But no way I could fork out that much money for a Mini, though I hear from A LOT of people they are fun to drive, I just don't see it. My idea of a fun car is one that looks sick and is crazy fast. Congrats on the new toy though.

Now that is a darling little car, Celia, congrats! I bet you are just looking for reasons to run to the store LOL. I drove a friend's Mini years and years ago and it was a blast!

Great looking car girl.. And yet the only person with pictured with the can is Sean.. whats up with that????

Hot little car, Celia! Congrats!!

I've ridden in a Mini, but never driven one. They're on my list to check out though, when the day comes that I'm no longer saddled with a mini-van and kids to haul around. :giggle:

Cool whip you got there:gj:

Well the mini cooper s is actually decently quick. Definitely like those choice of wheels. But you really should have gone with a manual. Much more fun.

Neato! I like minis.. my husband wants an earlier-model one eventually. He rented one when he was a roadie years ago in the UK and got the bug for them then.
I am sure that you'll enjoy one of the best benefits of driving smaller-sized autos.. parking is SO easy! And backing out.. I have no problems with my Jeepy, and I would venture to say that they are similar in length and maybe even width..
Who said that females who outfit their cars are rare? Not in this neck of the woods.. I have about 100 things I want to do to the jeep before I die.

very nice!! congrats. new cars are so exciting

Congrats! We need pics of you *in* it now!

Check this out! Your car (red) on steroids..
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writin..._mini_lim.html

Thanks for all the compliments everyone! Sorry I haven't had a chance to reply to this thread. We've been busy these last couple of days doing some mods to the car!

We had thought about getting a manual when we looked at them but if I went that route, I probably would have looked for one of the 2006 special limited edition GP models which is a really sweet looking Mini. However, I do a lot of city driving and shifting gears constantly is not fun to me. If it was mostly highway driving, then it wouldn't be a big deal but stop-and-go traffic sucks.

Let me just say though, if you've never driven a Mini that's a turbo automatic, you don't know just how MUCH fun it really is...yes, even for an automatic! Like I said, I'm not a big fan of manual transmissions just because of the inconvenience but Sean drove a lot of manual cars and he even said the other day that it's not necessary to have manual on THIS car!

Anyways, I just wanted to post some updated photos to show off some of the mods we did over the last couple of days. We put the new wheels on and just finished lowering the car late last night. I believe it was a 1.5" drop and I think it looks GREAT now! While we were dropping the car, we also put in the new rear sway bar (upgraded to a 19mm).

We got the black out beltline kit in so we went ahead and did that as well. Sean put in the new intake which is awesome and gives the car a great sound. The blowoff is really cool. We're going to order a catback exhaust system to replace the current one and I'm trying to convince Sean to let me get a big brake kit as well. I would love to get some Brembos or Baers or something like that. We may just go with Wilwoods because they're less expensive.

I'm still waiting on my carbon fiber spoiler, painted fenders, and a few other things to black out the chrome parts, etc. I love the look the car is coming around to and can't wait until I can get the painted fenders on it! We're going to get the windows tinted on Monday so I'll take some new photos after that!

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,
Celia

Here are some photos of the car before we lowered it...
http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/prelowered1.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/prelowered2.jpg

And here are a few photos of it from today after it was lowered and had a fresh wash too!
http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/...07lowered1.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/...07lowered2.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/...07lowered3.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/mini/...07lowered4.jpg

Sick car! but the coolest thing of all is that you have a bull terrier, put him in more pix! :gj:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by reediculous

Sick car! but the coolest thing of all is that you have a bull terrier, put him in more pix! :gj:

---

LOL...I actually have TWO Bull Terriers! I have a male named Marv that's about two years old now. We've bred him with a couple of different females that friends of ours own and we ended up keeping one of his daughters, Juliet, because she is just too cute! Here are some more photos of them...

Marv
http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies1.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies2.jpg

Juliet
http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies3.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies4.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies5.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies6.jpg

Sean and Juliet
http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies7.jpg

http://www.exoticsbynature.com/bullies/bullies9.jpg

Lol! Those dogs are awesome! oh yea, so is that car! :D