A group of Florida plaintiffs have come together to file a class action lawsuit against Mini. Their issue is with the reliability of the Continuously Variable Transmissions in first-generation Cooper hatchbacks from 2002-2006 and in Cooper Convertible models from 2006-2008. A cursory web search on the matter returns plenty of results from Mini owners complaining of the same issue, sudden failure of the CVT, and having mixed fortunes at Mini dealers when trying to get the situation resolved.

The Florida suit comes a year after a class action suit was filed against Mini in California for the same reason. As with the Florida case, the California legal action Brad Aarons v. BMW of North America, LLC sees "restitution, damages and other relief" for plaintiffs who were "required to spend approximately $6,000 to $9,000 (one-third to one-half of the original purchase price) to repair or replace their CVTs, or sell their vehicle without repair for a substantial loss...." Parent company BMW has not yet commented on the matter.

Original article and peanut gallery commentary at Autoblog...

 

CVT's are garbage for cars. They're well suited for atv's, snow mobiles and other low hp/low torque applications. Honestly though, people will always be looking for reasons to sue. No one takes responsibility and expects everyone else to step up and fix whatever is wrong.

Anyone who was an original owner of these vehicles, I feel sorry for. They wouldn't have had the resources to know these things were time bombs. Anyone else who bought one of these used and out of warranty I can't feel sorry for because they didn't do their research. Proper research about these cars with CVT's just a few years after their release would have returned too many red flags about this style transmission. Gen 1's are now 6-10years old. There's too much out there warning people of this transmission that anyone who would have bought one anyways within the past handful of years only to have the trans go out, simply neglected to research their purchase.

 

I bought mine new in 2003....after the stories of the CVT failures started I felt like I was driving a ticking time bomb.....when we got to 60K I decided I had pushed my luck far enough and traded for the Clubman in 2010....we were wondering just the other night as to what had happened with our 2003...wonder if it's still running or has it bitten the dust.............

 

Minilla, that was probably the smartest thing you could've done! lol. Cut your losses before they catch up with you.

 

Curious- why the picture of a second generation model? They didn't even have a CVT.

Val

P.S. I hope the plaintiffs win. Settlement should be a new CVT plus scheduled fluid changes for 100k. I'm willing to be that many CVT failures were caused by not changing the fluid. I have read of MINI dealers saying it was a lifetime fluid and changes were not covered by the free maintenance plan in effect for the first 36k or 50k. However it says differently in the little book that came with my '02.