A new teenage driver tried to get across the street and has totaled my daughter's '04 Cooper. Thankfully nobody was hurt. She had 90k on it and it was starting to have some transmission problems, bearing noise coming from the CVT, and some slippage. I suppose things sometimes happen for a reason, the accident saved me what likely would have been a very large repair bill. In any case, she would like another mini of course, but I'd like to buy something newer, with fewer miles and fewer potential problems. In doing quite a bit of research I'm finding there are issues with the newer turbo having noise issues, given my experience with the CVT, I'm looking at a manual transmission. Am I correct that the non-turbo mini with a manual 6-speed transmission would be more reliable? I'd definitely like to get an MCS, but am concerned about turbo failure/problems. Are the newer automatics problematic, are they still CVTs?

I appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,
Dan

All Second Generation (2007 model year and later) automatic models have Aisin units.

I love my 08 S with the 6 speed automatic. I read somewhere the Automatic was faster than the standard, not much, maybe half a second in the quarter. You can leave the automatic in drive, you can move the shift lever over to sport and shift with the lever or mine has the paddle shifters on the steering wheel. It's just a blast. I live and work in the Houston, Texas area so lots of traffic, which is why I wanted an automatic.