Clutch or Gearbox?
 

I have a 2003 Mini Cooper S, with just over 95k miles on it. It has driven beautifully for the 40 days I've owned it.

My son was driving it on a highway, but it seems to have lost forward propulsion. He said "I don't recall hearing any sounds whatsoever it just didn't go into the next gear and was not grabbing."

About a week earlier, I did have an incident at a stop sign where I could not get the thing into 1st gear to pull out. I was finally able to pull out in 2nd, and then at the next stop sign 1st worked fine again. I figured it was something flukey, but never had issues again, until now.

My initial reaction was that it has to be the clutch, but there were no warnings or gradual alert. My mechanic gave it a superficial look, assuming it's a clutch, and ordered the parts. In the meantime, we were talking about the insane amount of labor required to get to the clutch.

We discussed that he didn't see some of the items he would expect to see with a bad clutch, and I have been reading some other forums that make me think it may be actually the transmission.

I won't know until they've got it all torn down and into "service mode" to look at it. Just curious if anyone else has had issues like this or could provide some insight.