This paper explores the robustness of minimum distance (GMM) estimators focusing particularly on the effect of intermediate covariance matrix estimation on final estimator performance. Asymptotic expansions to order Op(n−3/2) are employed to construct O(n−2) expansions for the variance of estimators constructed from preliminary least-squares and general M-estimators. In the former case, there is a rather curious robustifying effect due to estimation of the Eicker-White covariance matrix for error distributions with sufficiently large kurtosis.