I'm starting to smell what smells like hot oil coming out of the engine bay area of my JCW R60 with 94k miles. I'm a little twitchy on this since my old bugeye WRX smelled like this when it snapped its turbo oil hard line and leaked oil onto the block any body have any experience with this?

​​​​​​Im starting to think it might be time to install a catch can since that and a new oil line fixed the smell in my WRX

 

Rather than speculate, might be worth it to open the hood, get the car on ramps, and poke around.

 

Had this with another car, from new. Was a cam shaft cover leaking but only when engine was up to temperature and running. Oil dripped down on hot exhaust. Could smell "hot oil" but no exhaust smoke. Oil consumption nil. No oil leak sign on ground or engine.

But there was a stained area on the exhaust manifold that arose from the oil.

Tech finally got this sorted.

I'm with njaremka. Time to open the hood and give the engine good visual looking for oil sign. You might just spot where the leak is.

 

​​​​​​I did a visual inspection before posting and didn't see anything and the smell isn't yet consistent enough to be able to replicate it although it has been more prevalent the past two days since its been in the mid 80's here

Im starting to get a wee bit frustrated with this car in particular since I'm certain it was at one point time pretty heavily modified and returned to stock before it was sold.
Unfortunately the only other Mini I have as a reference is my F60 that is still squeaky clean on it's maintenance so i still don't know what's normal for these.

 

Check the engine hot and idling. Then after a bit turn the engine off and watch.

With the car I mentioned in my previous post the odor wasn't consistent. The leak was quite small -- just a drop every so often when the engine was hot and running. Even then it was most common to smell the odor when I was stopped at a light. Once underway any odor was rare.

With the engine off and being careful you can take clean white paper towel and wipe the area where the camshaft cover mates to the head. The towel should come away with no oil sign. A bit of dust perhaps but no oil sign.

'course, the oil leak doesn't have to be from the camshaft cover. So you have to look at the front engine cover, really (to state the obvious) wherever there is a cover that has oil behind it.

 

I had some hot oil smell & an infrequent very small spot on the ground. Oil filter mount/heat exchanger gasket or turbo drain line. Drips on the horizontal part of the down pipe. Not a fun job, but easier than the thermostat housing. A good writeup by mbwicz on here. May as well change the oil pressure sending unit & the o2 sensors since you'll have them off. Good luck