It pretty much did on my Mrs Cooper S Conv. It went from horrible/crashy/tramlining/rough/twitchy to almost civilised when I swapped the Pirelli Euphoria RF to Hankook Evo V12. Grip, especially in the wet improved by an equal amount. It's still a hard-ish ride as you'd expect on something that claims to be "sporty" but without the pain.

They look like poor reps, that will probably weigh about 3 tons each - not helping with the ride quality!!

6k seems a lot, I paid £6800 for a 55 plate MCS with JCW kit fitted and 35k on the clock.
Mine has the 17" MINI Bullett alloys and having swapped the run flats (£500 but worth every penny) the ride is pretty good. It is a little crashy, theres no way you could expect this sort of car to have R/Royce levels of comfort but its certainly not jarring. A 3 1/2 hour journey to York the other week was perfectly comfortable.

Thanks for the links, although Monmouth is a bit far to go for a cheap car, also as is 90k on the clock for me.
I'll look at the others over a cuppa.

It seems quite difficult knowing what is a right price and what isn't.
In some ways, £6k seemed comparable with others around and being local didn't hurt but it is a dealer flogging Mini main dealer trade-ins.

I'm also a bit picky on colour as I've always wanted the grey since we couldn't have it on wifey's Cooper.
I could cope with black but they don't seem to look as good and a lot come with a white roof although I could get it covered I suppose.

Still can't get my head round the MCS in Kent from earlier posts as I thought it might have sold by now at £5500 but it's still advertised everywhere so maybe not so good in the flesh.
Again, it's not just down the road to pop over and see it.

Distance is still the thing with that one.

So why might this still apparently for sale? http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/m...

It seems quite attractive on most counts.

Looks good, but its £2k than the other!

Seats are snug too, had them before.

Its got the same wheels i had on mine, albeit in black - they are 18's and trust me you dont want them on if you have a bad back! Could sell seperately though.

IMO colour coded arch and side trims dont seem to sit well on these cars.

David, I tested one with those seats and thought they where great, so much more supportive that std seats. I was really disappointed that there was other issue s with the car that stopped me buying it. I to have a bit of a back issue.

That one looks in very nice, it has the better brakes, and the Hk sound system, plus very low mileage. I'm not qualified to comment to the price, but suspect it is a bit high. But try this, enter reg and mileage, and fill in some details and they send you a valuation, adjusted for mileage. I used this as part of my negotiations.

http://www.whatcar.com/valuations

I don't want to put a dampener on proceedings but if you have a bad back I'm not really sure why you're looking at a MINI Cooper S.

The ride is relatively firm even when compared to other hot hatches of similar vintage (talking R53 here).

However leaving that aside for one moment the comment you've just made regarding seats stands out.

The JCW sparco seats are miles better than the standard ones when it comes to support and comfort. My wife used to own a MINI one with std seats and for me they were the one thing that let the whole package down - horribly unsupportive and just plain uncomfortable on long journeys. We've recently bought a 2003 JCW and the JCW seats were top of the list of priorities. But they are a compromise - they are seated quite high and have no height adjustment, plus you can forget getting anyone in the back except for very short journeys.

Apologies for being a tad negative but the comments about your bad back made me think I should pipe up - hope its of some help.

All comments are valuable so don't apologise.

My back isn't that bad but is prone to discomfort when sitting for too long and takes a while to get moving in the morning.
I still ride my KTM 400 trail bike without problems but it is just something I have to consider - therefore no low slung cars any more like my old Chimaera.

My concern about the seats were actually more about getting in and out rather than comfort when in.
Not concerned about passengers as that's what the X3 is for - I am even looking at a way to make up a cover to go over the space between the front seats and the tailgate cover so I can leave the back seats down most of the time.

The X3 is my distance car now so the Mini will be for localish journeys around the south east but still capable of longer trips if I fancy it.
It seems that as long as the wheels / suspension aren't too extreme, I will be perfectly happy with an element of stiffness, just not the horrid crashing of the one I drove yesterday.
My old 130 was hideous until I changed the tyres to non RFTs.