Cooper S with 1,100 miles stalled 3 days ago at the on-ramp to a highway. Check engine light came on. Numerous road-enraged drivers honked, flashed lights, screeched brakes and made obscene gestures. I put on hazard lights as soon as car stalled and coasted a short distance to get out of the firing line. When I turned off the ignition and restarted the car it ran OK except the "check engine" light came on and stayed on. I brought it to the dealer. They expressed astonishment and swore they had never heard of such a thing happening. They "ran a diagnostic test" and kept it for 2 days, presumably for observation. They called me and said they had reset the "check engine" light, but could not explain why the car had stalled. On the receipt it said there was FC P1689. They cannot explain what this means and cannot say if the car will give an encore performance. Not wishing to be the entree on the menu of another feeding frenzy of insane drivers, I asked if they would agree to buy the car back from me. They said they would do this, but the car was now only worth $22,000 of the $31,400 I paid for it a few weeks ago. Has anyone had a similar experience?

 

Can't say I've had that experience, but based on resale values of Mini's I'd say that is BS.

 

Do you have a Lemon Law in your state?

 

Electronic Thottle Control - Torque calculation error

Thats a new one.

As to buying it back, that sounds about about right. The moment you drove it off the lot it dropped $5K. Then need to make a profit in selling it used.

 

I agree. Check KBB.com and ask them to give you that price. My car with 17,779 miles on it is actually worth more now than when I bought it , blue book value.

 

KBB means squat. Look at all the threads of ppl trying to sell their cars here quoting KBB and are so disappointed when it comes time to sell.

 

Yes, but the problem has to occur 3 times with failure to fix it.

 

Just had the same thing happen to me today, 980 miles, 2006 Cooper S. Pulled out of the driveway, 1/4 mile down the road, less than 50mph, the car starting bucking and no power and I pulled over and the engine warning lamp came on. It restarted and I drove back home and hooked up my scanner and TC P1689 came up. I cleared the code and it's been fine since. The code is still in memory, but not active. I'm going to talk to the dealer and find out what is going on.

 

Doc: Try another dealer or repair shop. See if your state has a lemon law. Check with your state's version of the bureau of automotive repair and see what else might be done.

 

Glad I'm not the only one who has had this problem. If the dealer knows this is a problem, he is not admitting it. The service manager for BMW/Mini for this area is researching it as well. I will post any updated information.

 

Forget about the dealer buying your car back at loss.......it would be MINI USA and they should either do one of two things. Give you all your money back or order you a new replacement. This is given that they cannot fix the problem. Based on your experience there is a huge liability issue to MINI USA if they dont address the issue.

The dealer should have a Customer Relations Person at the dealership that handles Factory Buy Backs.

Good Luck

 

I've never seen anybody buy back a car with one code being thrown. It will take a bunch more than that. I had a Chevy Suburban turbo diesel that would crap out like that, run-stall. They finnally went and replaced the fuel injector pump. Well three pumps later - Chevy came out with a new warranttee to cover pump failures, which was a common occurance. I think I went through four of them and at least 7 sets of controllers for the pump. All covered under their warranttee. Sucks big time, but its a car.

 

This same stall sequence happened to our 2005 MCSa with 5,700 miles on it on Monday. We left the car at the dealer and today they called and said that it is a Software bug and they reset the computer, cleared the codes, and loaded a new Software Version (v21.02?).

Seems fine now, but if a component caused this it will pop-up again later.

 

Thanks a lot. Sounds like a software bug, as you say. How do I find out what software version I have? Please God, it doesn't run Windows. Most of my conmputers are Windows and I am really tired of crashes!

 

If they were Mac based there wouldn't be any problems. ha.

 

Here is how to find out what software you have.

I'd say go back and ask them to update the software in the DME, it costs them next to nothing and should fix the problem, that or see if the can give you a slightly older version of software (pre-throttle issue).

Please report back with your software version and build date, I recently had mine software upgraded (to fix cold start issue) and if this happens I'd like to know what the cause is.

 

DoctorK12001, sorry to hear about your experience. Ideally, no car should have problems with only 1,100 miles (or 20K for that matter.) Since cars, and their components, are manufactered, at least partially, by people mistakes are made. Even parts manufactured by robots will fail prematurely.

After having only one problem it seems early to be considering a trade. Give Mini a chance to rectify the situation and if they can't use the lemon law.

The dealer offering $22K on a vehicle with 1,100 mile and a original sticker of $31,400????