Hooray for Prestige MINI, and extra thanks to Ron in their service department!
Today’s trip South almost turned into a serious nightmare! It started well enough, easily loading GPMINI with all the cases and stuff we need to take to Florida …Â But immediately, hints of trouble appeared – GPMINI’s battery was VERY flat, so much that rolling her down the hill was not enough to “bump start” her. Luckily Pat & Dave next door had a set of jump leads, and we succeeded to get her going from Margaret’s BMW.
All went well till somewhere in Connecticut, where the tire warning light came on. GPMINI got new non-runflat rubber more than a year ago, but I assumed the warning was due to a leak from one tire while parked at home, and didn’t pull off for a few miles … by then, things sounded bad. Left rear tire was definitely sounding rumbly, but luckily there was a garage with air as we pulled off I-95.
Sadly, air was not enough; it turned out in those couple of miles with the warning light, the tire had gone totally flat and self-destructed! I couldn’t believe it, but now we were stuck with no tire on a Saturday afternoon – and GPMINI’s 18″ wheels are pretty rare!
We called a few local tire places, but no-one had anything. A VERY helpful gentleman, Alex, at the garage tried to help us remove the shot tire/wheel and fit the skinny spare, but GP’s have no jack or wheel brace, and his brace didn’t fit GP’s wheel nuts.
We drove over the road to a Walmart that had tire service too – these folks were incredibly helpful, and with lots of work managed to get GPMINI up in the air, remove the wheel/tire, and fit the skinny spare. Loads of work, due to her low clearance, and the wheel nuts being seized! But they did it, and charged just $3.50! Wow, thanks guys 🙂
We now knew our only hope was a MINI dealership with service open on Saturday afternoon, and 18″ tires in stock. Nearest dealership New Country MINI has no Saturday service. InSkip couldn’t help. Habberstad weren’t interested in helping, and Morristown had no tires.
Then I tried Prestige MINI, and spoke with Ron; he was SUPER HELPFUL! He confirmed they had two 18″ runflat tires in stock, and while they closed at 4pm, if I could make it there by 3:30 they’d do the work for us … we had 75 miles to go, at no more than 50 mph on the skinny, along awful I-95 with traffic snarls every few miles, but we made it with about 10 minutes to spare.
While Prestige worked on GPMINI, we went “next door” to a fabulous diner – Prestige even gave us a $10 gift card to help pay for lunch! And when we got back, they were just finishing up, GPMINI had two new runflats on the rears, and was ready to go 🙂
100% commendations to Prestige MINI, both Ron for arranging the “emergency” service and for Vasili and the other techs for doing the work and getting Margaret & I back on the road … we’ve finally made it our planned 360 miles, in just 11 hours 🙂
Let’s hope from here, things only get better …
M&I / GBMINI 
wow, what an ordeal but glad it worked out in the end and thumbs up to Prestige for being so helpful. I hear they are one of the best service dealerships and not suprised about Habberstad every time I’ve taken GP in for service they find a way to damage something. Sorry I wasn’t in town else I’d driven one of GP’s wheels up to you.
safe travels.
Ouch. At least it appears those special rims were not damaged.
Air compressor and jumper cables never leave the back of my mini!