Pretty early on in my second round of shopping the Mini Cooper SE caught my eye. From the moment it entered my radar part of me wanted it to be the one. It seemed unique and fun, yet a surprisingly good value. The base model had an MSRP of $30k, which came out to $34k out the door in Texas. At the time it was eligible for the old tax credit, so that brought it down to $26,500 all told – not bad for a new car, let alone an electric one. There was one enormous obstacle for it to overcome though…range.

I may be omitting some obscure option, but at 114 miles of EPA-rated range, the Mini Cooper SE has the shortest range of any new car on sale that I know of. That is even shorter than its cousin, the BMW i3, which was upgraded in 2019 to 153 miles. By all accounts it was designed to be a city car. Given my original prerequisite that an EV needed to make it to Houston without charging, it is surprising that I chose the Mini. I can’t deny that a lack of alternatives certainly factored into my decision, but the SE also charmed me enough to overcome that concern.

I will save the details of the car for the full review and focus instead on the shopping experience. The Mini Cooper SE was not widely available in the beginning of 2022 when I started looking. It had been on sale for a couple of years but was not a big seller. It happened that the nearest dealer to me, Mini of Austin, had just ordered a demo unit, so I was able to go do a test drive. I’ve always thought Minis were kind of cool, but I’d never driven one. I was pretty impressed with how good it felt. Suffice it to say that the part of me that wanted it to be the winner was encouraged after the test drive. It then became a question of availability and practicality.

Although the SE was not a highly sought after car, there still weren’t enough on dealer lots to reliably pick one up. Every one that I found online was invariably spoken for. I was left with no choice but to order one if I wanted one guaranteed. My experience with Mini of Austin during the test drive was positive: my sales associate, Trenton, was surprisingly knowledgeable about the car and was very helpful. They also assured me they would not add any markup to my order, so I decided to order through them. Or rather, I ordered online and had it delivered to them. Thus began an agonizing 5 months wait. First half of 2022 was arguably the worst possible time to order a car. Just about every manufacturer was backed up with tons of orders and the supply chain was such a mess that no one was sure on timing or even whether your car would have all of the promised features. The upside of ordering was that, especially being a Mini, I got to custom pick a few things like wheels and mirror cap color, even on the base trim. The wait was tough though. I was constantly tracking it, while simultaneously keeping an eye on inventory around the country. I almost flew to California for one I thought was available. Probably for the best that it didn’t work out because that would have been one helluva road trip getting it back across the Southwest. Aside from the wait though the ordering process was not bad; although mine was built without the heated steering wheel due to the chip shortage. I was compensated $500, and it’s not the most important feature, but I miss it even in Texas and would have given up heated seats over that if I could.

Of course the other issue that kept popping up as I spent all that time waiting for the car was whether it was worth the wait. I mean it was obviously a good car, but most Mini Coopers are 2nd or 3rd cars for people in the US, and those are ones without a minuscule range. I was hoping to make this my primary car as much as possible. I knew that I was giving up some use cases by picking the Mini, but since the few other truly affordable options weren’t fast chargers, I wouldn’t have been road tripping with them either. I hoped I could still take the Mini to the cities around me, and maybe even to Houston, but with my limited public charging experience that was a bit of an unknown. There was also the matter of space: my dog barely fit in the back, and while the front seats were fine, the back seats were mostly a write-off. It was certainly not going to be as practical as the Bolt was.

I kept shopping and flip flopping the whole time I waited for my car, but ultimately I didn’t find anything compelling enough to abandon it. Aside from the Niro, the closest anything came to tempting me away was the Bolt going back on sale at a steep discount. That brought the 2LT version I wanted right in line with my SE. But I told myself that I should wait to see how the Bolt reintroduction went and that the tax credit bought me a big depreciation cushion so I’d have ample opportunity to sell the Mini for a Bolt or something else in the future without losing money.