February 18, 2004
Comparing MINIs
Last night and today I am driving a different MINI!
I swapped GBMINI with Silver Bullet, owned by Keith ("slvrbullet" on MINI2), who works as a sales councilor at MINI Peabody.
Silver Bullet has a reduced pulley and air intake (both from ProMINI), compared with GBMINIs John Cooper Works upgrade.
We both agreed that the cars have very similar power; GBMINI feels a little smoother as the power rolls in, but the Works upgrade does not appear to have noticeably more performance for its price.
Of course, direct comparisons are difficult. Perhaps adding an aftermarket air intake to GBMINI would further improve its performance - but Silver Bullet is noticeably more noisy, presumably due to sound from the intake.
Silver Bullet (built mid-2002) also has almost 40,000 miles, compared with GBMINIs 13,000 (built early-2003).
So is the Works upgrade worth buying, over the lower cost of aftermarket parts? If all you want is more power - no. But if you want prestige and warranted reliability - yes.
Silver Bullet also has 15" snow tires at the moment, but I did not notice much of a softer ride compared with GBMINIs 16" runflats. This surprised me, and has persuaded me that it is not worth replacing the runflats with non-runflats at the moment.
Are you asking "Why did we swap?" ... GBMINI is at MINI Peabody to have some service work done, and to have a factory alarm installed. Keith was kind enough to agree to swap to simplify my day!