My 2012 Mini Cooper S Convertible Highgate Edition: Sometimes a Therapist Has Four Wheels and a Turbocharger

Sometimes a car is more than just transportation. Sometimes it arrives at exactly the moment you need it most. What began as a favor to help my dad sell his 2012 Mini Cooper S Convertible unexpectedly became something much more—a welcome escape during one of the most difficult periods of my life, and a reminder of why I fell in love with driving in the first place.

While 2023 and 2024 were some of the best years of my life, 2025 was the exact opposite. It was, without question, the hardest, saddest, and most stressful year I have ever experienced.

We ended 2024 in an incredible place. I had my dream job, we had our amazing new house, and we had two beautiful boys. On the very last day of the year, we even purchased our Acura MDX Sport Hybrid, completing what felt like the perfect family vehicle setup. Then 2025 arrived, and almost immediately, everything changed.

In early January, we tragically lost my brother-in-law, Josh, to suicide. Longtime readers of this series may remember Josh’s story from my 2014 car accident article. He was involved in a terrible crash and made what was honestly a miraculous recovery. However, he never fully escaped the effects of the traumatic brain injury he suffered. The challenges he continued to face were significant, and ultimately, he reached a point where he felt he couldn’t go on.

Josh left behind my sister and their two children. Our family was devastated. Our community was devastated. It was the kind of loss that doesn’t just affect one family. It leaves a hole in an entire group of people who loved someone.

If you are struggling, please reach out. The people around you would rather know you are hurting and have the chance to help than lose you without knowing what you were carrying. Josh did not get the help he needed, and I wish more than anything that he had.

If you are thinking about suicide or are in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also use the Lifeline’s online chat at https://988lifeline.org/chat/.

Our family was still trying to process Josh’s loss when another major challenge began at home. Jonah had been born in October of 2024, and shortly afterward we began dealing with some significant allergy and health concerns. Trying to figure out what was causing his reactions became a long and exhausting process. Courtney ended up eliminating a huge number of foods from her diet in an attempt to identify what was triggering his issues, and the stress of managing all of that, combined with the demands of having a newborn, eventually took a serious toll.

The result was severe postpartum depression and terrible insomnia. Getting Courtney on the road to recovery was a long and difficult process. It involved a lot of appointments, medication adjustments, trial and error, and some genuinely terrifying moments. There were times when it felt like we were just trying to make it through one day at a time.

Thankfully, we were not alone. Our village surrounded us. Our family stepped up. Our friends stepped up. My employer was incredibly understanding and supportive, and Oregon’s new paid family leave program allowed me to take a partial leave of absence from work so I could focus on Courtney, Jonah, Wesley, and keeping our family moving forward. I will always be grateful for that support.

Then, near the end of September, 2025 delivered one more frightening family scare when my dad passed out behind the wheel on Highway 6 with Wesley in the back seat. Thankfully, his wife was able to get the vehicle safely stopped, and doctors later determined dehydration was the likely cause. Still, at the time it was one more heavy thing added to an already overwhelming year.

By that point, the stress was almost crushing. I was trying to be a husband, a father, a caregiver, a Director of Technology, and everything else that life required at that moment. I was carrying more than I realized, and I didn’t even recognize how badly I needed a release.

I wasn’t looking for a fun car. I wasn’t searching for a project or a distraction. In fact, a Mini Cooper convertible was probably about the last thing I would have expected to end up with in 2025. But sometimes the right thing finds you at exactly the right time. Looking back, I truly believe God brought that little Mini into my life when I desperately needed something to remind me that I was still me outside of all the responsibilities, stress, and fear that had consumed so much of that year.

And it didn’t come through some elaborate search. It was sitting in my dad’s driveway.

In September, my dad was looking to sell his 2012 Mini Cooper S Convertible Highgate Edition with about 80,000 miles on it. A few years earlier, my dad and his wife had bought it as a fun summer runabout. It was supposed to be the kind of car you take out on a sunny day just because you can.

The Highgate Edition made it feel a little more special than a normal Mini convertible. It had the unique upscale trim, special badging, nicer interior materials, and a rich brown color combination that made the whole car feel more like a tiny British luxury roadster than a normal small convertible. It was still absolutely a Mini, but it was a Mini wearing its nice jacket.

Unfortunately, the previous year it had been backed into at a gas station, resulting in a crunched hood and damaged grille. The damage was enough that the insurance company decided to total the car. The funny thing was, it still ran perfectly fine.

My dad bought the car back from the insurance company for $1,900 with the intention of either fixing it or simply enjoying it as-is. But eventually, his wife decided she was ready to move on, and it was time for the Mini to find a new home.

I volunteered to list it on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for them. Then I drove it, and for a little while, my troubles melted away.

Suddenly, I was back in my twenties. The little Mini brought me back to a simpler time: my 2004 Mini Cooper S hardtop, my Mercedes SLK 230, and my Volvo C70 convertible. It combined everything I loved about those cars into one little go-kart rocket. It was silly. It was impractical. It was completely unnecessary. It was exactly what I needed.

After driving it around for a day or two, I called my dad and asked him how much he would sell it to me for. He very generously offered it to me for $2,500. Pretty cheap for a therapist.

Sold.

I did briefly debate whether to fix the hood. In the end, I decided it was a $2,500 car with a salvage title, and the dent didn’t affect how it drove. Instead, I bought a new grille and chrome trim piece on eBay for less than $100, installed them myself, and called it good. Those two small pieces made a surprisingly big difference, and in most situations the damage was not especially noticeable.

That little Mini became such a release for me that I started calling my drives in it “therapy sessions,” because, in a way, that’s exactly what they were. They gave me a chance to step away from the stress of the day, even if just for an hour. With the top down, sunglasses on, and the wind blowing through my hair… well, technically my scalp. A few things had changed since my Volvo C70 days.

The music depended on what I needed that day. Sometimes it was worship music, when I needed some quiet time with God and a chance to reset. Other times it was upbeat country music turned up loud enough that I could just sing along and forget about everything else for a little while.

My favorite route was the road between Sand Lake and Netarts. It was twisty, often quiet, and exactly the kind of road where the Mini made sense. It wasn’t about going fast. It was about feeling the car come alive. The steering was sharp, the chassis felt playful, and the little turbocharged engine had just enough personality to make every corner entertaining.

The Mini brought back something I had been missing. Not just driving a fun car, but driving a car that made me smile. For a little while, the stress, the responsibilities, and everything else waiting for me at home could stay behind. It was just me, a twisty road, the top down, and a tiny British go-kart reminding me why I fell in love with cars in the first place.

I’m incredibly grateful to report that, slowly and with a tremendous amount of hard work on her part, Courtney came back to us. She has fully recovered and is once again the amazing wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend that everyone who knows her already knew she was. I am incredibly lucky to get to be her husband.

As awful as that season of life was, it also proved something important. What we had built together was built to last. Our marriage didn’t just survive one of the hardest periods we had ever faced; it came out stronger. We learned how to lean on each other, how to ask for help, and how to keep moving forward even when things felt impossibly heavy.

Jonah also continued to grow and thrive. Thankfully, he outgrew almost all of his allergy issues and became the happiest, easiest little guy. At 21 months old, he is full of personality, and watching him and Wesley play, explore, and build their bond has been one of the greatest joys of this season of life.

I had every intention of keeping the Mini for years and years. It had become the perfect little escape. From roughly April through October, it was my fun car, while Courtney drove the Tesla more often since she puts more miles on her vehicle and genuinely enjoys all of the technology. The arrangement worked perfectly.

But just a few weeks ago, something happened that changed the equation. I received the biggest present of my life, and suddenly, the Mini had become a little redundant.

That will be the final chapter of my Cars of a Lifetime series—at least for now. However, before we get there, there is still one more vehicle that I have owned for nearly six years that somehow has never gotten its own story, even though it has appeared in the background of several others.

Next week…

The truck of a lifetime.