general problems of the 2005 Mini Cooper S

Driving on interstate and lost power. I pulled to shoulder and black smoke came thru air vents. I opened the hood and there was fire. My car completely burned up. I never had any mechanical problems. The tow truck driver said he believed the fire started under my car.

On 2/11/2016 I got home from work and I parked my 2005 Mini Cooper S (53,000 miles) on the driveway, turn off car and stayed with my kids & wife since they were waiting for me outside, my wife notice a sound & smoke coming from the car, the smoke were coming from the engine, I immediately open the hood & there was more smoke coming out, the headlights & all the lights turned on & stared flickering, also the wipers turned on, couple of seconds later the botom of the engine was engulfed in flames. My wife ran to get the water hose & I were able to put the fire out, we were lucky that I didn't walk inside the house like I always do, it could have been a horrible tragedy for me, my family and even our neighbors. The next day I had the car towed to my mechanic who after an inspection found out if was the power steering pump that got on fire and damaged all the wires around it, since he is a Mini specialist he told us about a recall for that specific part, but to our disappointment he ran our VIN # and found that our car is excluded from that recall since its a late 2005 production. That exactly same thing happend to us with the actuators, one day while my wife was shopping with my kids, they just got locked inside the vehicle with the windows rolled up, it was a summer day and luckily she was able to get out through the back trunk, we contacted Mini because there is also a recall for the actuators and they also excluded our car saying that it was a late 2005 production and were not able to get the recall. The way we see it Mini is not taking responsibility for their defective components, it is not fair since I have no way to find out if my car was build with not defective parts, obviously it was. I am terrified by the idea this could have been worst since we r always driving with our kids. U need to do something about this & make Mini liable for these safety issues.

A "pop" was heard when I was driving my vehicle on i95. I was able to pull over to the side considering when the "pop" occurred, my Mini lost power. As I was pulled over, the vehicle burst into flames.

Driving to work in the am. I smell something in the car. When I look at my passenger side seat I saw smoke. Pull over and got a better look at it. I have a holes in my car seat and the two vest that I place on the seat. It appears the heated seat had a electrical failure. Took car to Mini dealer. They said it real odd this happen. They also nice to say I would have to paid to fix it. Look at many site on internet and seen BMW/Mini and other company have issues with heated seats. It do not seem to odd to me. I did not even had the heated seat on because no one was seating there.

Defect initially occurred at night time in rush hour traffic: dash-lights went out, turn indicator not functional, heater blower stopped working (causing fogging of windshield/windows), air bag lights went on, seat belt light on consequently had to pull on the side of road (limited visibility, no speed indicator, could not operate vehicle safely). A couple of attempts at ignition cycling partially restored functionality. After initial defect, problem could be reproduced intermittently (all/some of the component listed above failed during course of normal operation of vehicle). Vehicle inspected by Mini/BMW dealer, root cause: interference on k-bus of one of the audio component, resulting in failure/malfunction of other components on the bus. Ultimately component (Mini I-pod interface) had to be removed -- part is available if needed. Request to have repairs covered was rejected by Mini/BMW customer relations on grounds there was no recall (vehicle is 5 months out of warranty --- 41k miles).