I would search this forum for the questions that you ask , you need to be armed with as much imfo as possible because being BMW , things are not cheap to repair , unless you can do most of it yourself .
You will soon learn the faults with the earlier cars , but do your homework as there are plenty of them out there for sale
.
My daughter has an 04 Cooper S , it's a great car ,low k's , good cond , was a good buy, but we did study a few before she bought it , clutches , gearboxes can be costly repairs
from what we read .