To all those higher mileage MINIs out there…

Have you taken a look on the bottom of your hood recently? I was cleaning out my engine on Sunday and found something fairly troubling.

The images show that the hood has been in contact with the rubber surround in front of the engine and has caused some interesting issues. It's worn through the paint and primer down to the bare metal on one side and is getting close on the other. #1 is the top right, #2 is the top left (where it's worn to bare metal), and 3 & 4 are the respective sides of the rubber molding. Has anyone seen or heard of this happening before?

My dealer is having MINI regional rep come out and take a look in the next couple weeks to determine what exactly is going on. While I have no concern that MINIUSA won't take care of the problem I'm alarmed that it happened in the first place. I suppose there's a very good chance that this is an isolated incident and there's nothing to worry about. But that being said I'd be interested to know if others with higher mileage cars out there are seeing similar symptoms

Update: Thanks to these photo (which were passed onto MINI engineers) we’ve got ourselves an official response and bulletin. Details can be found here.