They just released this study, and it is based on polling owners of 2011 model year vehicles.

As a brand, Mini was ranked the worst of the 31 brands reported on.

But interestingly, The Mini Cooper had the least problems reported of any compact sporty car, and actually won an award for that. I assume that was for the original hardtop model, and not the clubman nor countryman. I am guessing that S models are included in the designation "Mini Cooper", as well as roadsters, coupes and convertibles, but Powers website is not as clear as it could be.

Anyway, considering the quantities of each model they sold for 2011, I strongly suspect that this means that the countryman had so many problems that it single-handedly dragged the rating of the entire brand to the bottom of the list. A very high number of problems reported by countryman owners would be consistent with the results from Consumer Reports questionnaires.

Unfortunately I can't find anywhere on Powers website that they show the data for individual models, other then the models that in the top three for each category.

 

Seems as the Mini Cooper rating may only be including the R56 and R57, S, JCW, and Justa. Here is a quote from their site about the Mini:

"The Mini Cooper is offered in coupe and convertible body styles in several trim levels: Base, S, and John Cooper Works." Of course when they say Coupe they mean hardtop not the R58, becuase the R58 came out as a 2012 model year, there are no 2011 R58's...

 

yep, makes sense.

 

I wont lose any sleep over the results of JD Power's survey....

 

Yeah, there's nothing you can do about it other than hope all the issues with a first year model have been sorted out by now. Hopefully when they poll the 2012 owners one year from now the picture will look much better.

Wish there were a way to get more details. I would be so curious to see just how bad the Countryman situation was, and how good the Mini Coopers were.

Perhaps there's a silver lining here in that the Mini Cooper models won a award. It was not that long ago that they were overwhelmingly troublesome too, and hopefully we are already seeing that the more recent CM model years have significantly improved.

 

The ultimate embarrassment would have been if Mini owners reported more problems than Fiat owners Assumedly that didn't happen because for the 2011 model year Fiat didn't sell enough cars in the U.S. to be included in the survey.

 

We just traded in our 2011 Countryman on a 2014 Paceman. We ordered our CM early on when they were first coming out, had no issues with it over 3 years. None!
It was a Justa or Non S though, so that probably had something to do with being problem free as I think the Turbos had trouble......

 

Too bad Power doesn't seem to break out the data that way. I've been active on this forum since before the first CM's arrived, and based on all the owner comments it really does sound like Justas had significantly less issues.

 

Yep, my non-s 2011 has been great so far.

 

Car problems are on the rise: J.D. Power (CNNMoney) By Peter Valdes-Dapena February 12, 2014: 3:21 PM ET

For the first time in over a decade our cars seem to be getting clunkier.

Vehicle owners say the number of problems in their three-year-old cars, trucks and SUV's have increased 6% from last year, according to J.D. Power & Associates' latest dependability survey, released Wednesday.

This year's survey revealed the first year-over-year increase in problems in 15 years.

"Until this year, we have seen a continual improvement in vehicle dependability," David Sargent, vice president of global automotive at J.D. Power, said in a statement. "However, some of the changes that automakers implemented for the 2011 model year have led to a noticeable increase in problems reported."

The survey asks about all sorts of complaints, not just defects. The vehicle dependability survey pinpointed engines and transmissions as a big source of the problems, with four-cylinder engines being particularly problematic.

Most complaints about four-cylinder engines had to do with them being too noisy or having disappointing acceleration, not that they wouldn't run. The survey doesn't separate out those two sorts of issues.

Vehicle dependability is a strong predictor of customer loyalty, J.D. Power said. Auto owners who experience no problems with their vehicles buy another from the same brand 56% of the time. Loyalty tumbles with even a slight increase in problems. Just 43% of owners who experience three or more problems return to the brand.

Lexus, Toyota (TM)'s luxury brand, was the most dependable, with 68 problems per 100 vehicles. Lexus performed far better than second-place Mercedes-Benz, whose owners reported 104 problems per 100 vehicles. Close behind were General Motors (GM, Fortune 500)' Cadillac luxury brand, Honda (HMC)'s Acura luxury brand and Buick, GM's near-luxury brand.

The most problematic brand was BMW's, Mini. According to the survey, Mini owners experienced 185 problems per 100 vehicles. The second-worst performer in the survey was Fiat Chrysler's Dodge brand with 181 problems per 100 vehicles. Land Rover, Fiat Chrysler's Jeep brand and Hyundai were the five worst-performing brands.

"Hyundai's goal is nothing short of quality leadership, and the report shows we have work to do," Hyundai said in a statement. "We'll learn from this study and are confident our dependability scores will be better in the future."

Despite the brand's poor performance overall, one of Mini's cars, the hardtop Mini Cooper, had the best ranking the "small sporty car" market segment, according to J.D. Power.

"We look forward to learning from the customer data produced by this survey to better understand areas of improvement made, and where we can continue to do so," Mini said in a statement.

Survey results were based on responses from 41,000 owners of 2011 model-year vehicles. Last year, owners of 2010 model-year vehicles were surveyed.

 

I just got my survey in the mail this week. They want to know what I think of my 2014 Countryman. LOTS of questions, but I'm fortunate in that other than a rattle near the maplight, my MINI has been fantastic. I'm nearing 3000 miles. Either I got really lucky, or MINI has made some nice improvements. Everything has worked as expected. In reality, it's been way more reliable than I anticipated based upon the other past surveys.

 

I have been active on this forum since before the first CM's arrived several years ago. This is just a casual observation, but it appears very obvious that the number of first year problems reported by owners of 2013 and 2014 model year cars has dropped substantially from the earlier model years. I assume BMW knew they had to resolve the problems, because what happened, especially with the 2011 model year cars, had to be a huge embarrassment for them. We think that there is a significant difference in the build polity of our 2013 versus 2012 cars. It will be interesting to see if future surveys by JD power and Consumer Reports bear this out.