I got a 2008 MINI cooper s JCW about two months ago and shortly after I started driving it, it started to have an issue with first gear. It is a manual transmission and when I put it into first gear from neutral it will pop out of gear and abruptly go into neutral as soon as I let off of the clutch. It started doing it a few weeks after I got it, and has quickly gotten so bad that it does it about 90% of the time now, originally it wasn't a very big deal because I could just put it back into gear and it wouldn't have another problem, but now it won't go in at all. While it is my first manual transmission car, I am not new to driving stick, and it sounds like other people who have had this problem also eliminated driver error as the cause. I called a few MINI dealerships and they said they hadn't seen it before, but it seems like other people have had this problem too. Seems like it could be synchros, shift linkages, or the shift tower. Does anyone know about this or what I can do to fix it?