Steering shaking and strange braking!

Hi,

I've got a 57 Reg JCW S, 55k miles and just recently I noticed that when I braked strongly from about 70mph, the car strangely 'dived' to the left but the steering wheel turned a bit to the right..... like it was understeering, but this was straight line braking on a smooth dual carriageway.

It was pretty unnerving!

Anyway, today the steering wheel started to wobble quite a lot when just driving normally....getting worse as speed got to around 50mph. It definitely wasn't 'tramlining' over rough road or following a camber.

It felt like the wheels would fall off to be honest!

Any ideas folks what may be causing these things? - I'm guessing they are related in some way.

I actually trade in the car in just over a week's time as the 9yr love affair with Mini's comes to an end....maybe the JCW is just expressing it's displeasure at being traded in!:p.... so I really don't want to be spending money on it so close to being handed over (it's a BMW dealer, trading in against a 120d 3 door M sport).

Any advice would be a great help.

Cheers,
Chris