GF had one and tbh I quite liked it, it wasn't the worst thing to work on and was pretty fun to nip around in. The microswitch on the boot failed, apparently this is common, the steering motor went, I replaced it with a good used one which failed 6 months later,

The steering motor is badly designed, brush material (dust) was aloud to freely flood over the motor control PCB which is sitting on the end of the motor, after some bench testing the original motor was fixed by cleaning the PCB, blowing all the brush dust off, conformally coating the PCB and sealing the PCB chamber with silicon rubber, here on the motor was 100% for the next 2 years. I would certainly advice stripping a working motor and doing the above as a preventative fix.

We had some tyres fitted by a mob of monkey brained fucktards who jacked the car up under one of the rear arms, they are cast ali and it snapped, they didn't say anything to her obviously so she drove home like it and reported that "it felt a bit funny and people kept beeping" lol, the back wheel was sitting at 45 deg.

In the end I sold it as the gearbox became very noisy. However I've been told that BMW sorted gearbox issues after 2003ish, plus there are good company's set up who deal with broken mini boxes quickly and cheaply.

All in all, not a terrible car for a 1st timer. Better than the equivalent french muck.