[gotsmart]

We took delivery of our super-sexy Hot Chocolate Metallic/Silver Cooper Clubman on Saturday, May 10. We love the car, but it's already back at the dealership.

When driving on the highway on the first day, we noticed a pronounced shake in the steering and it wanted to pull to the right. Our tire shop obviously did a crap job mounting and balancing the Kumho Ecsta run-flats on the MINI R108 wheels. But it clearly came from the factory with an alignment issue.

The tint job done by the dealership was not what we ordered. We wanted the side windows all done an equal tint, with the tailgate windows done darker. The rear side windows came tinted darker as well, which looks totally ghetto.

After 3 days and about 670 km, we got a check engine light. The gas cap was secured properly when filling it up two days previous. Apparently it has a "super fine leak" detected somewhere, but the technicians are at a loss to locate it, and have asked to keep the vehicle for another day while they get in touch with the engineering resources at MINI Canada to find out what the issue might be.

So we're driving a dealer demo vehicle for the time being.

We're a little concerned that it had to make a trip back to the service department after only 3.5 days. Hopefully this isn't the start of larger issues with the car. We're now logging absolutely everything that happens with it.

[AprilWhine]

Sorry about your bad luck!

[ontheroadagain]

I know it's hard not to become hyper sensitive when things go wrong right at the outset. This is the first time that I've purchased a brand new model MINI. My two previous MINIs had no problems. I, too, have a new Clubman and on the whole it's been fine - took delivery on 4/28. An issue with the club door's cable needing to be replaced...and hopefully that's it.

I hope your dealership's service advisor is keeping you up-to-date and thank goodness they gave you that demo - it it a Clubman demo, I hope?

I'm probably repeating myself in this post...but I hadn't noticed this thread before and being part of this March production group, I thought I should step up to the posting plate.

Hoping your new MINI's issues are resolved quickly!

[AprilWhine]

If you want to see the champion motor mouths, check out the March 2005 production group. I was in that one, tracking the Daisy car.

[ontheroadagain]

I believe it! Have always enjoyed your posts, Sherry.

[gotsmart]

Update:

It took a week to get the alignment fixed, because the dealership did not have the "software" for their alignment rack for the Clubman. (Essentially, they didn't have the camber, caster and toe specifications to load into their automated alignment system.) They also did their best to re-balance the tires... they're still not perfect, but nowhere near the amount of shake we were getting.

We may still take it back to the tire shop to have them re-balance them, but at the moment, i'm not terribly pleased with them. But at this point, the tire shake is almost imperceptible, and the alignment is excellent. We're not sure why it was so far out, but it was definitely not in spec when it was delivered to us. Don't know why they didn't catch it in the pre-delivery inspection, either.

They weren't able to reproduce the error code that triggered the Check Engine Light, nor were they able to find the source of the problem, so the code was cleared and MINI Canada advised the service dep't to keep an eye on it.

We decided against having the rear side window tint removed and re-done, so they're giving us a service credit since it wasn't done right.

We picked up the car on Wednesday, drove it about 100 km and the Check Engine Light came on again.

So we took it back to the dealership again yesterday. They've had the car longer than we have since we took delivery. And chances are, we won't have it back until next week, since we're dealing with what appears to be an elusive and undiagnosed issue. Saturday will be two weeks since we took delivery, and we've had the car in our possession less than five days total.

They're getting us into a Clubman where they can. They've loaned us cars out of their sales demo fleet, but sometimes they need those back. They have one Clubman in their service fleet, which we're getting today. We've literally been back at the dealership almost every day, to either check on the status of our car, or to exchange one loaner for another.

It's been a most frustrating two weeks!

We love the car, but we really hope it gets itself sorted out. Fast.

[gotsmart]

Week 4 update.

We took delivery four weeks ago today. In the 28 days since, the car has been in the dealer's service department for 23 of them.

The problem with the Check Engine light was a cracked charcoal canister in the emissions system. Not a critical failure, but with that Check Engine light on, any other engine or emissions-related failures would have been masked. We were simply not willing to drive it until it was fixed.

Thankfully, our dealer's service department has been very understanding of our situation and has kept us in loaners and rentals (at no charge) while waiting for the parts.

Unfortunately, MINI Canada has never had to replace one of these, so they had absolutely ZERO replacements in their parts inventory. A replacement canister showed up at the dealer on Friday morning, and it was installed in our car right away. Our service advisor had two people take it out on two separate road tests to make sure everything checked out okay.

We went to the dealer to pick it up around 5 pm. As we were leaving, we went to open the sunroof, and it wouldn't open. We've actually experienced this on almost every Clubman we drove at some point. The front edge of it sticks just enough to trigger the pinch protection and it won't open. A bit of light pressure on the front left corner while trying to open it frees it up. Has anyone else experienced sticky sunroofs?

At any rate, we finally got out of the dealer's lot around 5:30pm. Normally, it's only about a 10 minute drive home, but because it was rush hour on a Friday, it took us closer to 20.

At 5:50pm, we pulled into our subdivision, and the car suddenly lost power. We pulled over to the side of the road, and the vehicle behind us pulled up alongside and the occupants informed us that the car was "leaking something" underneath. We got out of the car and smelled the distinct odour of gasoline. There was a trail of fuel spots behind the car and a huge puddle underneath.

Back on the phone with our service advisor (they close up shop at 6pm on Fridays) and he got hold of a tow truck through Roadside Assistance, and personally drove out to meet us in with the loaner vehicle.

So it's back in the shop again and we've sent an email to our sales rep, the sales manager, our service advisor, the service manager and the business manager (since it's being financed through BMW Canada Financial Services) informing them that we're coming in first thing Saturday morning to discuss the issues with our car.

[AprilWhine]

Goodness, I haven't heard of a MINI with so many troubles since the early models!

[gotsmart]

We're not sure if this last problem was a defect or just a service technician blunder when putting everything back together after changing out the charcoal canister. I doubt the service department is going to own up to such a critical and potentially life-threatening error if that was the case.

At any rate, our meetings on Saturday were very positive and productive. The sales manager and business manager will be escalating our case to the dealership owner and service manager first thing on Monday morning, and they will likely take it to MINI Canada. None of them have ever seen a brand-new car with this many problems.

One thing we made perfectly clear: We are not taking that car back. We have no confidence in it, and if we've had this many problems in the first few weeks, we do not even want to think about what it will be like in a few years. We love the MINI Clubman, and do want the vehicle we ordered. We just don't want the one that was initially delivered.

[gotsmart]

Just to update you all...

After a week of angst and abysmal communication with the "Client Loyalty Manager" at the dealership, we finally managed to get a meeting with the service manager, where we laid it all out on the table.

It seems that poor communication exacerbated an already very difficult situation with our car. After a lengthy meeting (about 3 hours) and being taken under the car in a service bay to see everything that had been done, we had enough of our confidence restored to feel comfortable driving the car again. We've had it for a few weeks now, and aside from a sticking sunroof, the car has been trouble free, and we're really enjoying it.

It will probably take a few more weeks or months to fully restore our confidence in the vehicle. It may take a little longer to feel fully confident in our dealership, though. Through the first few weeks, they showed us considerable good will and treated us really well in light of the hardships we were experiencing with our vehicle. Unfortunately, they squandered all of that good will within a couple of days by completely mis-handling our case and not communicating with us as they should have. But they're making every effort to win back our confidence and move forward in a positive way.