Thank you Herb Chambers!

My first MINI was purchased from Herb Chambers in Boston – they were prepared to sell their demo vehicle with low mileage, instead requiring $1600 of “extras”. I chose to pay the extra and enjoyed 9 months driving instead of waiting!

I have not been back to Herb Chambers since, because I have a much closer dealership, where I get excellent sales & service; also in the past I have read of problems that other people have experienced with Herb Chambers; indeed my wife had awful experience at another Herb Chambers dealership (Mercedes).

However, it seems that now is the time to review Herb Chambers again; they have taken the fabulously generous step of donating a two year lease on a MINI Cooper, to be raffled as part of this years MINIsOnTop!
It is hoped that 200 tickets can be sold at $50 each – so you have a 1 in 200 chance of driving a MINI Cooper for two years, for just a $50 outlay. And all the up-to $10,000 raised will benefit this years MINIsOnTop charity, the Kennedy-Donovan Center, dedicated to providing community-based services for infants, children, adults and families with developmental disabilities and other unique challenges in Massachusetts

So, many many thanks Herb Chambers!

MCS automatic test drive by “beekman”

Recently posted on MINI2:
… I found that shifts using the paddles happened far more quickly than shifts using the manual transmission. Because they happen so instantaeously, they synchronize perfectly with the “click” of the paddles, giving the whole action a nice mechanical feeling …
… I found the paddles very intuitive and easy to use – I was surprised, because my intial thought before driving the car was that they should have made one paddle for shifting up and the other for down. But it felt spot on …
… there was almost none of the spongeyness of feel or rubber banding that there is in many torque converter transmissions …

… I found the throttle a slight bit more responsive on the manual … after being broken in, and once the computer adjusts to your driving style, this wouldn’t be an issue …

… In general, the car felt every bit as sporting (at least in the mode I drove it in) as its manual counterpart …

Sounds like fun 🙂

(update: another review by Aleks on MotoringFile)