Good news for your missus then.
And great that you'll be able to tinker with the mini for fun now.
The MkIV Polo is good. I had an N reg 5 door 1.4 in Dragon Green and it was pretty nippy on motorways and around town too. Unfortunately it was a Polo L, not even a CL, so had no PAS (which my missus didn't like) but oddly had electric mirrors.