Just out of interest, what with the amount of clutches wearing prematurely, are the replacements getting a 'normal' amount of mileage before needing to be replaced again?

Or do the replacements suffer the same?

I'm just trying to work out what could be the cause, as it's not ALL cars. It's all a bit hit and miss. And perhaps it could be caused by something that's not replaced when the 2nd clutch is fitted.

Assume you are talking about clutch for the drivetrain, not the A/C system. Higher power loads and bad/aggressive driving can drastically shorten clutch life. On all the cars I've owned I've been able to go many miles w/o a clutch, except for a turbo car I had a centerforce clutch fitted and the springs broke up and the thing fell apart. The friction material should last a long time if driven properly. City driving obviously tougher on lifespan, but they should go 100k miles.

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Update:

Sorry not a Mini mechanic just working on a CVT version, experience from other cars. Since posting saw a lot of posts on failures that were pretty spectacular. Clearly the driven disk was not up to the power of the application to have failures like that.