I'm thinking of buying a mini cooper as my first car. The thing is that I only have around 10g's for one. I'm wondering how reliable a 2003 mini cooper is. I've read some other peoples problems with mini's and it seems to be the 02-03 models that have the most problems...

Would it be smarter to buy an 03 with fewer miles or a 05 with more miles?

the cooper would be manual with about a 30k mile difference between the two