| Well for what it is worth I started this thread (and another one on the "other" site) to keep track of CVTs that were working fine to see how many might fail over time. It has been about 2.5 years, we've had 35 MINIs check in and so far to the best of my knowledge only one has failed. Others may have failed of course and not checked back in, although people tend to post when they have a major problem like that. At 134K miles you have one of the highest mileages, but Willy had 189,000 as of April and there are a few others at over 100k. Based on that and the fact that the failure of manual transmissions is hardly unknown around here I'm not convinced that CVTs are particularly prone to failure. I think the real problem is that when they do break down they are quite expensive to replace, since MINI is unable or perhaps unwilling to do anything but replace the whole unit.
I've always found it more economical to fix a car than buy a new one, even when the repairs are quite expensive. The turning point for me is when I don't feel like I can trust the car to be reliable for day to day use. At that point it might still make more sense financially to fix the car, but it's too much of a hassle to deal with.
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