We picked up our Clubman Cooper D about a month ago and have now covered nearly 1100 miles in it. It is great, but in that time we have noticed a few 'issues', not all necessarily faults as such so I would like to hear from other Clubman owners with their experiences before bringing the issues up with the supplying dealer.
1) Fuel filling problems
This car is a nightmare to fill up with Diesel - whichever pump we've tried in at least two different filling stations (just filled it for the third time) clicks constantly and interrupts the filling of the tank. If you have the nozzle all the way in then you cannot get more than 0.1-0.2 litres in at a time before the pump stops, no matter how lightly you press the trigger.
The only option seems to be to pull the nozzle most of the way out of the filler neck, which allows uninterrupted filling, but a real danger of overflowing the tank.
Interestingly I have not managed to get more than 38 litres into the tank even when the range was down to a little over 10 miles. My R53 tank is around 50 litres so surely the R55 cannot be smaller, can it? Maybe our fuel gauge is totally out of calibration and there is actually 10 litres left when it thinks the tank is empty?
For reference, the overall fuel consumption from new is showing as around 47mpg on the OBC, and two fills after the dealer fill have taken us to around 1050 miles, so approx 350 miles per tankful (approx 40mpg if each fill is only 40 litres maximum).
2) Wind/road noise
There is noticeably more road/wind noise coming from the area of the B pillar on the driver's side of the car when compared to the other side and our experience of R50/R53 Minis.
Interestingly there is no outer door seal on the bottom of the passenger (nearside) door, as noted in other threads about changes to R56 build spec during 2007 as a likely cost cutting measure by the factory. However the driver's side door has the outer seal, as does the Clubdoor!
3) Faulty Auto A/C thermostat
We went on a long trip (around 75 miles) last weekend during damp and rainy conditions. The windscreen and front windows kept fogging up and I had to intermittently use the 'quick clear' button to use the blower and heated screen to clear it.
About halfway into this journey after I put the heater back to 'Auto' it went totally crazy and started pumping really hot air into the cabin. Even when I dropped the temperature control a couple of times it made no difference so I set the A/C to 'Lo' and even then nothing changed. We turned the heater off for the rest of the journey but it seemed to behave itself on the return journey.
4) Dodgy paint
We have a patch of really rough paint on the inside edge of the RH rear door - looks like a small piece of masking tape or similar was painted over right where there is a line of mastic along the edge of the door skin seam. It's painted, but rough enough that a sponge tears on it when cleaning the car.
5) 'Bonging' from the OBC for no apparent reason
Our car has an annoying habit of giving out three quiet bongs at regular intervals, with no corresponding warning message on the rev counter displays. It is quieter than the low fuel or low temperature warnings and seems to occur at all speeds. At worst it can do it every couple of minutes during a period of a journey!
The handbook is pretty useless at explaining all of the possible causes of the 'bong'.
EDIT: Now sorted on the Bong - turned out to be a software update I did on our TomTom at about the same time as Clubbie arrived added some speed and accident blackspot warning so it wasn't the car after all!
I would be interested to hear if any other early Clubmans are showing these issues, and if so have they been fixed by visits to the dealer.
Chris