I purchase a 2003 Mini Cooper used with 55000 miles, and seemed in great working order then. Now, 3 months and 2500 miles later, the transmission is blown.

It gave out going 2 miles per hour pulling up to a parking space - no high engine load, no high body roll - nothing at all.

We took it to the tech, who said something is wrong with the tranny, but they don't know what. There is some grinding of gears inside, but they don't want to take it off and look inside because they haven't worked on the CVT before.

Has anyone else had this problem? If so - what did you do? Also - how much does this tranny cost to replace/rebuild? How much does a conversion to a stick cost?

Thanks!

Also important to note - I have what one might call an "enthusiastic" driving style. However, I barely ever redline the car. I've held it at around 4k rpm's for decent acceleration, but not every day, and I've only taken it above the 5500 rpm redline maybe 3 times. I do try to get power out of it, but not over the top (I was warned against redlining the early edition CVT's)

Could this type of driving blow the tranny - in 2500 miles???

There's a whole set of threads here in the CVT forum on CVT problems. It's not definite, but a lot of folks think the CVTs are failing way too early and often. There doesn't seem to be any connection with driving style. In any case it's fair to say you've got company. A new CVT courtesy of BMW/MINI seems to run around $7000. Check out some of the other threads for more info.