My wife bought a shiny new MINI Cooper back in 2005. Good right? Well... a good start, but she decided to pick all the options folks who like GRM would not:
Standard Cooper, no need for a supercharged "S" - check;
Heavy, CG-ruining panoramic sunroof - check;
Gutless CVT slush box- check
So, fast foward to 2010 and hubby, (yours truly) has now inherited said "cute" MINI for daily driver duty. With only 60,000 miles on the clock the car still drives pretty good. But it's also pretty slow. Soooo, I've been thinking evil swap thoughts. Most specifically finding a wrecked Cooper "S" with the 6 speed auto box and and swapping over all the bits. I say keep the auto because the wife refuses to learn stick, EVAR. And it is her special car. She ordered it, and she paid for it with her money after she had finished school. So, auto trans needed. 'Nuff said there.
My question is does anyone in the GRM community have swapability experience with the new MINI's? The rest of the BMW family seems pretty amicable to swapping the right bits into the wrong body, so why not MINI's too?
I've been to the north american motoring and MINI2 sites and haven't found much. The few posts I did find all seem say it'll be too hard, or too expensive or that it would much more fun to install some polished door sill trim plates. (don't forget the double stick tape!) or perhaps a nice roof rack.
So how about it? Swappable like a S52 into a 318ti or project from hell?
Thanks!
