First, let me get this out of the way, I'm a car enthusiast, not a gearhead.

I live in Las Vegas and I had to travel to SLO California for a family tragedy, I have never taken a long road trip in my 2012 MCS so I said what the heck it should be a nice drive. The route I had to take was the the I-15 then CA Hwy 58 which takes you over the California coastal mountains (note: Hwy 58 is a total blast to drive in a Mini), It's a long drive of over 400 miles.

After my business was complete it was my time to come home, well I thought I was going home, about 10 miles east of Tehachapi I noticed I was losing power and before I could do anything the dreaded engine icon popped up on my console behind the steering wheel, the one that's half red, and my car shuts down, now mind you, if you've never drove this highway it runs through the Mojave desert and I was just outside of Edwards AFB.

So I call called AAA, I had no choice, then the idiocy ensued, got a call from a tow company and was told it would take one and a half hours to get to me because I was in the middle of nowhere, I told myself no problem I can do that, well that one and a half hours turned into five hours, I was dealing with idiots, I was easy to find if they had just listened to me because I told them I was 10 miles east of Tehachapi on Hwy 58 but they couldn't grasp that simple instruction

After I dropped of my car at the shop they told me it would take a week for them to get to my car, ok I understood that, got my car back and found out my cooling system had failed, they had to replace the thermostat assembly, coolant pipe, expansion tank and cooling hose, within a day and a half my car breaks down again with the same error I got in the desert, at this point I am not very happy, this is on a Friday night, back to the shop.

Now, I figured that my car broke down in hours after they said it was fixed they would get right to it and start figuring out what was wrong and repair it, well I was wrong, back to the end of the que, I call a week later to get an update on my car and was told the mechanic who works on Mini's is on vacation and would be back at the end of the week, I'm thinking to myself why didn't they tell me this a week earlier, I'm getting more pissed at this shop, a week passes, I call and I'm told I have water in my oil and that my head gasket is blown and my head needs to be sent out to make sure it isn't cracked.

I call a week later and they tell me that they can't remove the head because they don't have the tool to do it and they need to order it, now I'm thinking this shop works on Mini's and other European cars, the N18 engine has been out for ten years and they don't have the tool, I can literally feel my blood heating up, another week passes and I finally get my car back, this is what had to be fixed and charged for, Cylinder head rebuild, cylinder head gasket set w/o head gasket, cylinder head gasket, cylinder head bolt set, Turbo oil supply pipe plus multiple oil changes and coolant changes.

I finally got my car back with a large financial hit.......


Five days later I get a low oil presser warning, now I am really pissed off, this time I just took it to the dealership. This is what they found and fixed within two days, the water pump pulley was bad and they had to fix the charge pipe on the throttle body

My car has been running like a champ ever since I got her back and I will never be going back to the shop that I had always took her because of the worst customer service that I have ever come across, I've lost all confidence in them

Sorry for the rant