Karen Gets a MINI for her Birthday!!!

How do you suprise your wife on her birthday? With Karen, it's really hard to do, but a lunch trip to St. Charles back in August gave me a clue. As we were coming back from Mid Rivers Mall, Karen spied a small (really small) car spinning on the feature turntable at Fast Lane Cars . It was a really red little Mini Cooper S with all of the trimmings including gigantic 17" wheels and a checkerboard roof! After a lot of arm twisting (I try to play hard to get. Actually Fast Lane is high on our "fun to go to" list. Kind of like Chuckee Cheese for adults.) Karen convinced me to go, so I pulled in and she popped out and went to the car like she was a butterfly, and the bright red glow of the Mini was the light.

The salesman came out and Karen had a million questions about the little car and I could see that she was really interested in it. You have to understand Karen. For major purchases extreme consideration over every aspect must be made so that we can justify our action. Everything we have has to have a reason. I really don't know why she is like that after we got married. Before we were engaged Karen's major mode of transportation was an MG sedan (closely related to the original Mini with a larger Sprite motor), and a 68 Toyota Corona. Which BTW was a similar pale yellow to the new Mini. Both of these cars were fun loving and "Quirky". Far from the mainstream. Her husband brought a Fiat spider to the party when we were married and "our" first car was a 70 toyota wagon (we did keep the Fiat) which started the "utility car" series of vehicles punctuated briefly by a 76 bronco with 40" mudder tires and a 6" lift kit, and the full boat Jeep Grand Cherokee with the V8 that she roars around town in, but I seem to get all the speeding tickets. Other than that, the 30 years has been rather conservative and well, as far as the family car..... boring. Fortunately, We've always had a Spider somewhere for recreation.

Back to Fast Lane. She obviously liked the car, but we already had two red ones and so we didn't buy the car. Her interest in the Mini really made me happy though and laid the beginnings of what was to happen next. Finally something that would be REALLY fun to drive on a day to day basis and would let Karen have some "what the heck" element in her life again. That started a unique chain of events that ended in this cute little mini finding its way to our stable of cars.

How to get a Mini

This is not really an easy thing to do. I checked around town and made a quick trip to the Mini dealer in St. Louis and found that you don't just buy a mini, you go to the beautique and view a mini and make your choices and wait four to six months to get your purchase. You also don't pay list price. Rejecting this crazy notion, I decided to do more research on the subject and found that Minis were selling on eBay for about four to five thousand over list and the cars really weren't theirs. People simply put down their earnest money on a car and about two weeks before delivery they would list the car on eBay and essentially "sell their place in line" and make four grand. I checked with the dealer in Orlando FL on a trip home and got the same story and confirmation of the get in line scam. While they didn't like the practice, there was little they could do. Home I came and reviewd all that I had learned about the "Mini" experience.

It was time to do something, so I bit the bullet and got in line for a car and save the four grand, but what to do for Karen's birthday coming up in about a month? Kris, of course, was in on the secret and was excited about the gift from the start.I went back to Mini of St. Louis, a very firendly place to buy a car, and met Tony Jones (A kindred spirit from Orlando. Kind of made me feel better about buying the car) and he suggested we put in the preliminary order, for the base Mini, and on her birthday, we bring her in to select the options she would like as a change order. She should get her car around January, maybe even Christmas.

This sounded like a good plan, so Kris and I bought her a model Mini (yellow of course), and wrapped it for her birthday. She was really suprised and after a rather comlicated explanation of how you get Minis. She got into the Mini spirit of the thing. The next week we went down to MOSL to detail the car order and just by chance a person ahead of us in line had backed out of his yellow Cooper S and we slid right into his place for late November delivery. We were on a roll. To make it even nicer, MOSL offered to loan Karen the yellow Mini for a river cruise and car show in late October. She and Kris went and had a great time with the 35 old and new Minis and all of the neat old muscle cars details of the show are here.

Kris and I took Karen to MOSL to pick out a car.they just happened to have a yellow Cooper, not an S, there for her to see. I had ordered a yellow Mini Cooper S decked out as you see it in the pictures. The only thing she added at the dealers were the racing stripes, a black racing grill insert, and cloth two tone interior seats. I told you she was like that! It's a full boat Mini with all the options (except for the heated seats and circumnavigation display (both of us can read maps) and runs like crazy and looks cute as only a Mini can.

Mom's Mini comes home Friday after the options are finished being installed and it is checked out by the dealer. We are looking forward to the first "break in" outing to Oklahoma to see the Fiat group before Chirstmas.