I have a 2004 mini that I have babied, had yearly oil changes, repairs, tuneups, you name, and all of a sudden the engine has a whiny sound. I paid $900 to have the transmission flushed out and was told, I need a new transmission, that the whiny sound is a transmission failure. I have 57,000 miles on the car, and drive it mostly in the city. I have only taken it to a mechanic that repairs mini coopers in San Francisco. I was quoted by two different mechanics, $4,000 for a rebuilt transmission and another $,4,000 in labor. No automatic transmission should crap out at 57,000 miles. While I adored my mini, I'm turned off on the fact that the mini of this problem and never alerted owners. I'm looking at Hondas and Toyotas since repairs for the transmission are absurd.

I purchased a new 2004 Mini Cooper that was a spare car, that was never hardly driven. Now at approx 60k miles the CVT transmission has failed. There was a class action lawsuit about it that was never notified of. I have spoken with BMW of North America too many times to count. They are the worst company that I have ever dealt with. They could care less about that fact that they sell luxury cars "the ultimate driving machine" and they are dangerous cars that have caught fire, failed while driving and have too many defects to list. - There need to be another class action lawsuit on this problem as well as all others that are still happening.

I owned a 2004 Mini Cooper for about a year. Since day one the transmission made strange sounds...and after a few months of owning the car the sound became worse and problems began to arise. The car would whine, and making a grinding sound under the hood as well. On several occasions while sitting at red lights the car would shake extremely hard and act like it was about to die. Also the car would jerk and shudder driving at parking lot speeds. Well finally after plenty of trips to the mechanic and thousands of dollars later my mechanic told me the transmission was failing. I did my research online and apparently the transmission (CVT = Continuously Variable Transmission) was defective in Mini Cooper automatic model years 02-06 because of BMW/Mini's high demand to manufacture the little cars so quickly. There is even a lawsuit... Well anyhow, I called Mini to see if there was anything they could do to help me out. They quoted me 10k (what I paid for the car in used condition lol) to fix the transmission issue, and I'm sure that involved a brand new CVT and then the installation. My mechanic quoted me nearly the same price. Also nobody wants to work on these cars, which is why the labor charges are so high. Any work done to a Mini involves taking the whole front apart.

I warn you, STAY AWAY FROM THESE CARS! They will only leave you feeling heartbroken and penny-less.Please take my advice, I ended up taking a huge loss and selling the vehicle for much less than I paid, and it felt even worse knowing I put nearly 4k of repairs/work into it...