I used to drive MINI Coopers. (Had a '65 Mk 1 too, back in the late '60's but that was a different beast....) Last one was a Gen II 2013 Clubman, complete with CANBUS electronics. Survived a sunroof drain leak that ruined one of the 'controllers' adjacent to the fusebox in the passenger compartment's footwell, as well as saturating the fitted carpeting in the front. That all ended well enough when my insurance paid the R&R bill, got me back on the road.
In July of '23 said Clubman 'died' in a parking lot 9 miles from home. Even bump-starting wouldn't get it going, yet the battery was fine! Turned out there was a small, brained copper ground wire betwixt the starter and its solenoid that had corroded in the ten years since I'd bought it. Fully exposed underneath to all kinds of environmental contaminants like the salt used on Midwestern roads in winter, it finally succumbed hence stopped grounding the solenoid. Seems this factor had some effect on the CANBUS electronics that also disabled the ignition system so even bump-starting this 6-speed manual equipped vehicle was rendered impossible.
Local repair shop fixed the problem in a day with a new starter for $120, which the tech told me was a b*tch to install owing to the engineering of such a compact FWD vehicle as these newer MINIS.
Last Friday I got a 'call of shame' from my wife, who's owned and still drives a 2006 MINI Cooper S Cabriolet since October of that year. A mile away it failed to start yet the battery was fully charged I later found out when I went to her rescue. With jumpers later I found it wouldn't start, yet everything else electrical would function just fine.
So it's sitting in a shop's yard presently, awaiting their techs' investigations into WWW last week. I have my suspicions, but as her MINI doesn't use the same motor as did my 2013 Clubman (traded in 2022 for a stick Subaru Impreza) I'm hesitant to go with the same component failure prognostication.
Could BMW really be that reluctant to fix a 'known' issue over such a long production cycle?