On March 12, 2009 at approximately 9:00 pm my wife and I were driving back from dinner in northridge, California when I made a stop at the local post office. I was driving my 2005 MINICooper hatchback and did not notice any warning lights or errant behavior with the car. I stopped at the post office to mail a package, parked the car, turned the engine off, locked the car with my wife inside the auto, and went in. When I returned approximately two minutes later I found my wife in the car in a great state of panic with smoke pouring out from under the hood of the car. I immediately unlocked the doors with my car key, made sure that my wife was out of the car, and we called the fire department. We both witnessed a small fire burning underneath the engine block. The fire department quickly arrived, opened the hood and put out the fire. I contacted a representative from MINIon the 13th who informed me that someone from BMW would be contacting me regarding the car. I towed the car back to my house and towed it to bob smith BMW in calabasas on Saturday the 14th. Bob smith BMW has provided me with a rental car in the interim. I then received a phone call from BMW from a steve kossar on March 17th, who requested the details of the incident. When I spoke with susan at bob smith BMW later that week I was informed that the steering pump was replaced along with a couple of additional parts. No explanation was given as to the cause of the fire. I was also informed that BMW North America would be assigning an engineer write a report on the status of the MINIand that bob smith BMW would not release the car to me until they received word from BMW North America that the car was sound. Since then I have placed two phone calls to Mr. Kossar at BMW on April 1 and April 7 and left messages asking for a status report on the car. To date I have not received a reply and no word on the cause of the fire.

- Northridge, CA, USA