Buying a car can be stressful. It’s a lot of money and, unless you are very well off, a financial obligation for years to come. American dealerships have a checkered past when it comes to the whole buying experience. Everyone has heard horror stories of hours-long slogs through high-pressure sales tactics. Buying our 2016 MINI Cooper S involved none of that.
The MINI USA website has a wonderful Build and Price a MINI tool that lets you select the model car you want and then tweak endlessly the options, packages, and dealer add-ons you desire. Best of all you can save these builds in your own online garage for further tweaking later.
As a part of the saving process you can produce a PDF file with all the details of your MINI – interior and exterior options, colors, fabrics, wheels, you name it – and a specifications sheet that lists the cryptic dealer codes for those options. After days (weeks, really) of tweaking and tuning, I had the set of options I wanted. With an email to the dealer I was able to initiate a new car order, I just attached the PDF.
The dealer sent me a deposit authorization form that I filled out and faxed back, along with my credit card number, and the car was ordered. No pressure, no hassel, no “what will it take to get you into this car today” tactics. After the order was placed the saleswoman sent me a scanned copy of the order to confirm the vehicle was what had been ordered. Except for the delivery time (6 - 8 weeks) it was almost Amazon-like. One-click, prime delivery cars would be amazing.
We did make a trip to the dealer about 10 days after the order was placed to have our trade-in appraised and to ask some questions about finance options. The dealer was informative and casual, no pressure whatsoever.
In (hopefully) a few weeks the car will be delivered and we’ll make a final trip to sign papers and collect our new MINI. Concluding the easiest new car purchase I have ever made.