Our new Roadster is finally tucked away in our garage!

Here it is at the MINI of St. Louis dealership waiting for us to drive it home.

We took delivery a few hours ago. Everything at MINI of St. Louis went very smoothly. Our MA Karen and the rest of the team there really made it a great experience.

We basically just drove it home, so not a lot of first impressions.

I enjoyed driving it, but need some daylight, and a chance to get everything adjusted to take it out and really see how it feels. Also trying to stay within the break-in period limits makes it hard to really get a good feel for the acceleration and braking.

Even with windows up and windscreen in place, my ears were getting a bit cold on the highway (~49 degrees F). Conversation was quite practical under those conditions though. And the heated seats work great as they have in our previous MINIs – another area where the MINI is a great contrast to our utilitarian (work) Prius.

The car looks great and I’m really anxious to get it out in the sun and really take a good look at it, and get some serious pictures. They’re predicting rain for us tomorrow, so it might be Wednesday before that happens. It will give me time to play with MINI Connected, get the phones paired up and so on.

My 370Z was a great car, but it felt so right to be back in the MINI fold again!

My first challenge is figuring out the correct tire pressure. Dealer delivered it at ~32psi. Door sticker and manual say 41psi. Mentioned it to my MA and the response she relayed from ? said that 41 is maximum and they recommend 32-35.

Roughly 25% lower than door sticker seems awfully low to me… I set it to 39psi and will see how it feels.

…time passes…

Just took a quick spin with 39psi. Rode a bit rougher of course. Not excessive but rougher. Need more time to really tell though.

FYI, the tires are: Continental ContiProContact SSR 205/45R17 84V