OK, here's what happened. I got in my car this morning to start her up. Pressed the clutch, turned the key and she came right to life.
Now for the interesting part and the reason for the topic. Out of habit, I usually pull the gear shift to 4th and then back to neutral to make sure she is in neutral before I release the clutch. Well this morning when I tried to pull into 4th, I could not move the shifter into gear. It moved laterally in neutral (with considerable effort), but there was no way it would get into gear. Well at this point I'm sh*tt*ng my pants wondering what catastrophy has befallen me. After several minutes of warming up, however, the gear shift started to get easier and easier until eventually she warmed up enough that everything was normal.
Has anyone ever heard of or experienced this before? Should I be concerned?
The car only has 700 miles on the odo.

 

I've had that problem in the past in a Celica (1997). It was nothing that driving slowly and warming up didn't cure. This is the first I've heard of a MINI with the difficulty.

It was really cold in Toronto last night. I didn't experiene the "glue-like" shifting you describe.

 

Read some posts before that described the problem. Moisture gets into the shift cables, some had bad seals, and freezes. As the car warms up, the cables, which are routed near a heat shield, and thaw out. MINIUsa should know about this.

 

In other words, take it in for service to get the seals and/or cable replaced. If the dealer balks at this, they can query MINIUSA as MiniCD notes. But hopefully they will know and be able to fix it w/o question. What I wouldn't do is make a habit out of tugging away at the frozen linkage. These things have been know to break...and if it does, you're in deeper doo than you are now.