In Our Cars, Richard Gunn’s MINI R50 CVT is displaying running problems.
About 15 years ago, I owned the world’s worst Mini. The automotive villain in question was a bright orange 1980 example that looked so cheerful and innocuous that it was difficult to believe the evil within its soul. It seemed incapable of making any journey without something going wrong. Things eventually got so desperate that I replaced it with an orange Austin Allegro instead. And you know things must be bad when you have to get an Allegro to bring some sort of reliability to your motoring.
Well, I now find myself seriously contemplating another Allegro. Because I seem to have found that 1980 Mini’s spiritual successor. This time though, it’s from 2005 and prefers to be known as a ‘MINI’ rather than ‘Mini’. The capital letters possibly emphasise its sins even more.
It should have been so easy. My partner Dianne is learning to drive, but the Suzuki Jimny convertible she’d been using wasn’t really the best vehicle for the task, not least because of its short wheelbase mega-oversteer and plastic hood windows that had gone cloudy with age. So we started looking for something better. Our choices were limited because Dianne wanted something fun and interesting, but it also had to be an automatic; being Canadian, she shares the belief of many from across the Atlantic that ‘stick shifts’ are the instruments of Satan. We eventually settled on a MINI or a Fiat 500, with the latter being dismissed because, having only been introduced in 2007, examples were more expensive than MINIS.
We went and looked at several examples – including an early Cooper described as in ‘excellent condition and driving perfectly’ that was running on three cylinders and was so damp inside that the upholstery had gone mouldy. But eventually, at a dealer in Bedfordshire, we found a 2005 black MINI One CVT automatic. It had just 76,500 miles on the clock, a fully-stamped up main dealership service book and had last been serviced a few months previously. It all looked good and the test drive revealed no issues. So we bought it, for £2600.
No class CVT
All was fine for a while – although the garage failed to pass on the service booklet when we picked up the car and later claimed not to be able to find it when contacted about it. So, not a great start. Then, after a few months, Dianne reported some problems with the acceleration. I took the MINI out and found the transmission was slipping when accelerating hard. It was then that I discovered just what an awful reputation the R50 CVT automatics have. I know, I should have done my homework beforehand, but I just sort of assumed that a 21st century car built under the auspices of BMW would be generally alright. How wrong I was. The online forums were full of people whose cars had CVT issues similar to ours. In the USA, there had even been a class
action suit against MINI over it. The transmission fluid is meant to last the lifetime of the car, but it seems the best advice is to change it every 30,000 miles, a task not made easier by the filler hole being situated beneath the battery and the ECU. Once that has been carried out, the gearbox needs to be reset. It was all a little more complex than simply draining the old oil and plonking in some new stuff via an easily accessible hole, as I was used to with older cars.
But the CVT issues just seemed to open the floodgates. Literally. On a trip in pouring rain, the seal lifted at the top of the windscreen, allowing water to get in and take out the remote control electronics contained in the rear view mirror. Then, overnight, much of the brake pedal pressure disappeared. Frankly, it was beginning to make the 1980 Mini look good.
Fortunately, there’s an independent MINI specialist, Dankan Mini Shop (dankanminishop.co.uk) in Peterborough, near where I live. I took the R50 in there and was reassured by the advice and professionalism of owner Daniel Butcher-lord. ‘We’ve had worse,’ he told me. A few days away at Dankan resolved the CVT issue, with a change of fluid and a reset ’box. But the brakes are proving more stubborn. Dankan found a dodgy rear caliper, which was causing the rear pads to bind and suffer heat damage, plus some corroded pipes that were leaking; all of these items have been replaced but brake pressure still isn’t what it should be. So investigations continue.
In the meantime, nobody’s got an Austin Allegro for sale, have they? Orange desirable, automatic preferred…