My CVT Mini was less than 1 week old and had under 250 miles on it when the engine suddenly lost power. The tach showed the engine would not go above 1500 rpm (apparently a protective feature of the car). This happened on two separate occasions. The first time it happened I was only about a mile from my house so I limped the car home. The second time it happened I switched into manual mode and this seemed to allow the car to rev higher and attain more speed so I was able to get it home again, but the car was surging and not shifting properly. I contacted service and I had the car taken to BMW of Darien Connecticut. They did a diagnostic on the car and said there was nothing wrong.

Now, I have reviewed the message posts on the Mini web site and apparently other CVT owners have experienced the same problem and it was related to the throttle actuator and wiring harness. I pointed this out to the mechanic at the shop, but they indicated that they had never heard of this problem. They test drove the car and said it was fine.

If the problem happens again, I would like to make sure that it gets corrected. This is a real safety issue and I'm afraid I could get rear-ended. How the heck can I get the service people to fix the problem if they are not even familiar with issues like this? What is my next means of recourse should they again fail to correct the problem (assuming that it does happen again). Also- is it safe to drive the car when this happens and how can we notify MINI that this seems to be a problem?

Scooter1rad