2003 MINICooper S. my wiper motor died in a heavy rainstorm, or so I thought. Driving without the wipers in hilo, hi where I live with 140" a year of rain can be deadly when wipers don't work. It is a well documented defect affecting all original 02-06 minis. See here for details. I repaired mine simply by grounding the wiper motor to anywhere else on the car. I had to drive 3 weeks without wipers before I could fix this. Dealers charge $600 to fix it and it is a design defect and the motor is not actually dead. It is a poor, and potentially deadly design. I guess I could have spent a couple thousand renting a car for that time, or just spent $600 right away and another $500 on the car to get it fixed. I took my chances, so will many others. There were plenty of times I couldn't see well and hoped for the best. Here is the site with lots of info about it. www.mini2.com/forum/first-generation-faults-fixes/141234-wiper-motor-failure-2.html www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/1st-gear/83170-my-windshield-wiper-motor-died-in-A-storm-at-night.html.

- Pahoa, HI, USA

My 2003 MINICooper has a cracked windshield that resulted from structural problems. It is L-shaped and it started at the bottom middle of the windshield.

- San Francisco, CA, USA

Both passenger and drivers side windows are stuttering when I try to roll them up or down. This is when I am even able to get them to work. Found that when the weather is hot, they won't work at all!! meaning I am having to wait for it to cool down to roll the windows down if I am lucky and have on one occasion got stuck in my vehicle because the car door handle also would open the door from the inside and I couldn't open the window to open the door, which was very dangerous since I had a child with me. This has been occurring more and more frequently and just got my door repaired and still having issues with the windows making it impossible to do anything that requires a drive through, or at my previous apt you had to enter a code to get into the gated community and I had to get out of my car to do this, and I live in Colorado, and it gets very cold. This should be a recall, due to many forums and other MINIowners experiencing the same issues! from forums shows that even replacing the motor won't fix the issue, what a waste of money!! this needs to a recall once again, can't afford to keep getting this fixed and dishing out money, especially when I have a kid with me from time to time. Unacceptable.

- Fountain, CO, USA

The contact owns a 2003 MINICooper. Upon taking the vehicle in for an oil change, it was discovered that the driver side struts needed to be replaced. Approximately four months later, the passenger side strut needed to be replaced. The front and rear brakes were also replaced and the vehicle had an oil pan leak. The driver's and passenger side window motors failed and needed to be replaced. The current mileage was 12,900 and failure mileage was 10,000.

- L.I.C., NY, USA