I had to get another car because my daughter wrecked hers and I couldn't find a suitable replacement for her with money that the insurance company was planning on giving us so I started looking for a vehicle for myself. With the insurance money and some other savings I wanted to spend less than $20,000 and get some sort of all wheel drive wagon. If I could find a manual transmission, that would be awesome but equally important was great gas mileage and low enough to fit in the garage with my Thule box attached.
After looking at a few different wagons I wasn't really finding anything that I wanted or could afford and then I started looking at MINIs. I test drove this dark blue 2016 MINI Countryman ALL4 S with a manual transmission at MINI of Fairfield County. I liked the feel of driving stick after a 10 year hiatus but the price wasn't nice, there were scratches on the paint and it had a lot of miles on it. I continued looking at more cars but wasn't really finding what I wanted and decided to look for another MINI.
I found one in Watertown, CT but when I went to go look at it somebody had jumped in front of me and it looked like they were going to buy it. I had also found another 2012 MINI Countryman ALL4 S up in Hartford, so I headed up there and took it for a test drive. I liked it but what scared me off was the high mileage and multiple owners. The dealer, however, said they were going to put 4 new tires on it and redo all the brakes, and throw in a roof rack. Still, so many miles on the car was a bit disconcerting.
While researching MINIs all night and getting some feedback from the interwebs about high mileage MINIs this 2014 MINI Countryman ALL4 S with 22K miles popped up on one of the Car Searching websites that I was using. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, a 5 year old car with only 22K miles? That's 4K miles and change a year. Granted, it wasn't being sold at a MINI dealer, the price was attractive and it was a manual, too!
After a lengthy test drive and some negotiating I put a down payment on the car and then started work on getting the money together in order to purchase it.
The day before my birthday I got a ride to dealer with the money in hand and purchased the car. Before leaving the lot, I was able to get my phone connected to the car but in doing so I learned that while it's connected to Bluetooth the connection is only for the phone and it won't play music. There is a stereo aux in jack and a USB connection that I will have to figure out how to connect to my phone.
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