in was considering a cooper s after i sold the vxr and i ended up buying my 182, the cooper s is a big problem car, between the heads needing de-coked and them getting death rattle theyre an expensive fix, there are plenty of them around me in garages around the 07-08 mark with around 30k miles on them and the reason is because theyre fucked.... theres supposadly a fix for the death rattle which is a belt tensioner from a 2011 cooper s but i decided to not bother and buy something cheaper as the one i was looking at was 8.5k and i couldnt spend that sorta money knowing itl soon need walnut blasted or the chains done!, my advice is either buy a post 2011 cooper s due to the different engine or avoid it all together unless youre going for an r53