I have my 77leyland as a project do up car but want something for every day, my commodore wagon is on the way out and I recon $7-10,000 is my budget at the moment
looking on Gumtree and carsales in vic there are plenty of coopers in that price range with reasonable KMs
I want an auto due to wanting an every day drive, can drive stick just cant be bothered all the time.
what I want to know is would spending an extra 5-6k on a Cooper S really make that much difference and if I do keep it base model how hard is it to mod them to add some extra power down the track, what should I avoid/ look out for?

RWC and some reg does help

If anyone is selling for any reason also let me know

I would search this forum for the questions that you ask , you need to be armed with as much imfo as possible because being BMW , things are not cheap to repair , unless you can do most of it yourself .

You will soon learn the faults with the earlier cars , but do your homework as there are plenty of them out there for sale .

My daughter has an 04 Cooper S , it's a great car ,low k's , good cond , was a good buy, but we did study a few before she bought it , clutches , gearboxes can be costly repairs
from what we read .

I have a 02 cooper and a 05 cooper s and I think they are both good cars, as with all cars they have their own little quirks I am trying to sell my cooper but it is manual is do have it listed in the cars for sale section, as they are made by BMW they are expensive for parts and can be a little challenging to work on overall a fun little car to drive

_________________
Don't under estimate the power of a Mini

1975 Supercharged Blue Mokezilla
1976 Fudge Moke
1967 BRG & White 67 Morris Deluxe
1974 Clubman Mini S
2005 Red Mini Cooper S
2009 Mitsubishi Outlander VRX

Bargain:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2006-Mini-Co ... 27f83a57f3

Auto, cooper S, recaro seats, chrono pack - it has everything.
You could sell it in 2 years and get your money back.

Don't for two seconds think you can reliably mod an auto NA mini for more power: If you want the power, buy an S. Simple as that.