I recently received a package in the mail from BMW. The letter inside complimented me on my purchase of such a fine vehicle, and included some booklets illustrating the amazing engineering, cool safety features, and community events surrounding this consumer product.

Which was sort of lame. I mean, whatever. It's a car.

But, packaged with their exciting DVD "Passion For Performance" showing BMWs racing, crash testing, how they are made, and all sorts of other stuff that I'm already forgetting b/c I'll probably never watch it, they included 4 CDs with 16 TED talks. Including a bunch of speakers I'd love to hear - John Goleman, Dan Gilbert, Burt Ratan, Malcolm Gladwell, and Robert Wright.

That's a pretty cool gift. I mean, I'm sure you can get 'em on the internet, and yeah, TED is really trendy nowadays. But still - how often do you get sent a free gift that's useful?

Ok, I really should go to dinner...

Been reading up on these, I have a separate post about the numerous silly features of the bimmer. It turns out that Mini is owned/manufactured by BMW, so I guess I'm getting a BMW either way :). And I noticed when browsing both sites that a bunch of BMW technologies, like some of the active stabilization controls, seem to have trickled down to the Mini.

I'm leaning towards the Mini, as the luxury features of the BMWs don't really seem worth the price, but we'll see how they drive. Wikipedia has a nice long article on the Mini.

Actually, it looks like the Mini can be made almost as expensive as the 328i - there's a super sport package ("The John Cooper Works Tuning Kit") which makes it significantly faster (0-60 of 6.7sec or so - barely higher than my S2000!) and costs ~$7500. With it and a few luxury options (like a GPS nav system, ipod adapter, decent stereo), the theoretically $18K Mini ($25K for the S Convertible) turns into a $37K Mini S Convertible w/ super zoom. I'll have to try driving it and see if it feels $9K better. Also need to see if they have financing deals - BMW is offering 2.9% & 2 months free for their certified used cars.

Shannon & I have been working on lifestyle improvement / stress reduction lately. One possibility we're considering is replacing my S2000, so that we both have cars that can have car seats, and thus can switch who picks up Tovar from day care / takes him places with less advanced planning.

I'll be a little sad to lose my lil cutie, as I had great fun with it, but I've had it for 7 years, and as long as I have a convertible that goes zoom and is safe, that's good enough for me. The internet tells me I should get about $14K trade-in value for my S2K, so that will help defray the cost a bit.

So - looking for recommendations for a car that:

* Is a convertible
* Is safe (ie has roll bars like the S2000)
* Is zoomy
* Is not too expensive (ideally < $30K, definitely < $50K). This means that Bimmers are still in contention, but they need to justify their cost.

Here are the 4-seat convertibles I've found so far that I don't hate:

* Mini Cooper - This was my first thought. It's so cute! And I saw one with 2 matching car seats in the back (matching each other and the car) - and they were so cute! "Handling is very agile, with quick, precise steering and little body lean, making it truly fun to drive. The ride is still a bit choppy, but less so in the redesign. The base engines are now more refined and the turbocharged one in the Cooper S is very punchy" - punch, choppy, agile, precise - sounds perfect! And it's really cheap ($18K-$25K new). But 7.2sec 0-60 - I'm used to ~6 sec.
* Toyota Camry Solara - Cheap, well-rated - a good mental comparison car to ask "Is this more expensive car really that much better?". 7.5s 0-60.
* Audi TT - Cute, mid-price ($40K new), CR didn't test.
* BMW 3 series - Mmm...If I decide to spend the money ($30K-$50K new), this will be a strong contender. #1 on CR's owner satisfaction survey ("Would you buy that car again?). Not as zippy as my S2000, though, 7.4s 0-60.
* Volvo C70 - Mid-price ($40K new), good crash-test results, worth investigating.

Any strong thoughts? The BMW and the Mini both seem more attractive based on specs than the others, and CR agrees (they are recommended, the others are not, except maybe the Solara).