Wanting to check in on this with the rest of the forum to see if it is a common issue.
Got an oil leak on the Cooper S. Seems to come from somewhere in the lower front area of the car, slides under the bottom of the motor, pools around the oil drain plug and drips into the little groove on the power steering fan duct. It is not the drain plug, replaced it so I am 100% sure, I even wiped it to make sure. The entire underside of the engine around that area is oily. The loss is not severe, at least for now, 2K miles on the oil change and I've lost about half a quart I think (the dipstick shows the oil level being midway).
Anyone else had this issue? Any hints what I am looking at?

 

Well NAM-ers, sure enough putting in the correct search terms has given results I was looking for. Seems like I have the oil pan leak! I'm not gonna worry about it for a while until it starts eating more oil.

 

British cars have a long tradition of leaking oil. It's probably part of the retro design that BMW put into the car to link it with it's English roots.

Dave

 

Haha
It ain't a true Mini if it's not leaking oil
I'm going to have to look carefully because it might be the crank position sensor O-ring.

 

oil pan and crank sensor gaskets are typical.. this is normal as the rubber ages... eventually you will replace all the rubber throughout the car if you keep it long enough (fun!)

 

I am having the same problem but the oil pan gasket has been change only a month ago. Also, the leak is severe enough because the low oil pressure light is on. I stopped driving it but I want to have some idea before going to the dealer. It seems around here they're always trying to pull one over on me. I've looked at some posts about the passenger side engine mount leaking but could that cause low oil pressure and the leak underneath? HELP!

 

The engine mount will not cause an oil light to illuminate. First make sure your oil level is at the proper level, if not, top it off and see what happens.

If the level is good, I would suspect an aftermarket oil filter, or the previous shop has removed some necessary parts from your oil filter cap to fit the filter. I have seen this many times. Also, the oil pressure sender may be bad, I would check to see if there is oil leaking out of the back of the sensor.