Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Mini Magazine

As this magazine drops onto your doormat, or slides into the shelves of your local newsagent, we’ll be deep in the heart of the festive season. The merryneum, if you will, between Christmas (or your own particular celebration of choice) and New Year as we struggle to wade through the leftover mince pies and all the random festive telly we’ve recorded. And if you find yourself weighed down by a surfeit of sprouts and gravy, fear not – your favourite Mini-centric mag is here, so there’s no need to get up. Just cast your eyes across the board of fare, you’ll see that we’ve lined up a truly delicious platter of treats to ease you into 2023. Sometimes it can be hard to narrow down which car to give the…

GET LISTED Email minimag.ed@kelsey.co.uk to let us know about any upcoming events. Due to the uncertainty surrounding Covid, please be aware that events are subject to change. Keep an eye on the organisers’ websites to stay up to date with any developments. 1st January 2023 New Year’s Day Gathering Brooklands Museum is the place to be on the first day of the new year, and it’s always guaranteed to be a stellar turnout. https://www.brooklandsmuseum.com 12-15th January Autosport International Absolutely massive multi-marque show at Birmingham’s legendary NEC. Well, you’d expect it to be massive, wouldn’t you? The NEC’s like a town with a roof. www.autosportinternational.com 29th January Mini Fair The British Mini Club’s season opener at Bingley Hall is always a must-visit event for Mini fans. We’re excited already. https://britishminiclub.co.uk/events/mini-fair/ 24th-26th…

■ Readers with good memories may recognise Jay’s Mini from a former Mini Magazine feature… and if you’re struggling to place it, this ’82 HL used to be white. When it appeared in our October 2020 issue, the car was in fact sporting a shade of Rover’s Diamond White along with a host of custom details. Well, as was the case with so many people, Covid changed a lot of things, and the lockdowns gave Jay a chance to fully reinvent the Mini inside and out; indeed, it’s been such a comprehensive makeover that we’re lining up another feature to show you how it’s evolved. Stay tuned!…

So much of life is about contrast between good and evil, right and wrong, peace and violence; the poppies on the battlefield, the smiling assassin, the fight at the wedding. The f lawlessly presented Mk1 you see here throws this perennial cosmic truth into sharp focus: it’s at once delicate and forceful, slender and muscular, a bullet with butterf ly wings. The essence of the car resides within the way it’s been comprehensively reimagined by the craftspeople and experts at Swiftune. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful high-end restoration; on the other it’s encapsulating all of the knowledge they’ve earned and learned from developing and building consistently successful race Minis over many years. The panache of a Cooper S inside and out, with racing prowess smeared across the chassis…

The reasons behind our carbuying decisions are many and complex. For some people – as hard as it may be for enthusiasts like us to believe – there is little pleasure to be derived from driving, and a car is merely an appliance; this explains the number of Vauxhall Corsas that exist. For others, family safety (or, at least, the illusion of it) is paramount, combined with a commanding road position, hence the inexorable rise of the SUV genre. People who buy sports coupes have a very different set of priorities to those considering pickup trucks, or electric city cars, or vans… there’s no all-encompassing answer to the question of why we choose to drive what we do, there are too many variables. But arguably, on paper, the ownership of…

being an early adopter can be a double-edged sword. For every person who gamely gambled on the first-gen iPod or Fujitsu’s late-nineties plasma TVs, there are a whole bunch of people with a garage full of Betamax tapes and unloved Zunes stacked up next to their Acorn Archimedes. Sometimes, however, the unmistakeable rightness of something new and cutting-edge is so plain to see that it would be the act of a fool not to grab it with both hands, and that’s precisely what a chap named Paul Baker did back in 2006 when he signed on the line for this MINI John Cooper Works GP. The performance potential of the firstgen MINI had been made screamingly evident (quite literally) with the supercharged Cooper S variant, the R53. And turning the…

Some cars just hit different, and SpeedTech Motorsports’ R56 Cooper S is one such car. This MINI goes hard on every level – it looks so good, it sits so right, the interior is special and, as you would expect from a company with the word ‘speed’ in its name, it’s got some serious power on tap. R56s really don’t get much better than this, do they? SpeedTech Motorsports has been around for over ten years and specialises in VW, Audi, and, of course, MINI. For company owner Abraham Viera, his interest in MINIs was piqued many years ago when he first drove a customer’s R53 and the rest, as they say, is history. When it came to this R56 build, there was a very specific reason for choosing this…

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. It would be a very dull world if we all liked the same things and were suspicious of change; nobody would modify their cars for a start, and this colourful showcase of show-stopping motors that you hold in your hands would instead be filled with British Leyland paint code colour charts and differences in seat cloth weave, for want of more disparate subject matter. The fact that individuality shines brightly at the centre of the motoring galaxy is something we should all be very happy about. Of course, individuality is a doubleedged sword: what’s cool and interesting to one person may well stick in the craw of another. And that, for some, is exactly the reason that they do what they…

■ It's been a strong year for Minis on the Car & Classic Auctions site, with some very interesting highlights. The 1976 Leyland Mini van pictured was almost like a Speedwell-style modified car thanks to some Mk1 Cooper elements like a 12G295 head and twin carbs. Its only ‘sin’ being a Leyland and not an Austin, it sold for £22,750 - the third-most expensive van in the last five years. Had it been an Austin, that price would have been a record. A 1997 Cooper Si sold last month for £15,750: it is a John Cooper Garages conversion, but without the John Cooper Works package. In fact, this one is a Cooper Si, a model that is far less common, especially as this is a narrow-arched car with 12" wheels.…

Highly competitive action, impressive grids and a welcoming paddock have cemented the Mini 7 Racing Club as a crowd favourite since 1966. And as the dust settles from the championship finale at Silverstone in October, when three titles went down to the very last race, plans are well underway for 2023. This year will see club racers contest 17 rounds of the Mini Spares-supported National championship, from March to October, plus seven Winter rounds, four of which form part of the main season. Within the club there are four individual classes to suit different budgets and experience, and entry numbers traditionally hover around 50-60 drivers, occasionally even more. On 18-19 March, the season will kick off to the sound of straight-cut gears and Weber carbs at Silverstone on the full…

There was a real buzz around the 2022 running of the Classic Motor Show at Birmingham’s sprawling and humungous NEC. The fact that Comic Con was being held in the neighbouring halls certainly helped to provide an air of the surreal, but the most noticeable thing was the palpable energy: sizable crowds, massive numbers of cars, and busy trade stands proving that consumers were willing to spend, spend, spend. After the show was paused in 2020, the 2021 return was an impressive thing – but ’22 was just nextlevel. Particularly pleasing were the gaggle of adjacent Mini-themed stands from the British Mini Club, Mini Cooper Register, Midlands Mini Club, MINI Y Register & 02 S Register, Mini Moke Club, Minikits, and Cooper Sport 500 & 2000 Mini Register; each one…

The time-freeze is a classic cinematic device. Remember the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus is introducing Neo to the central concept of the Matrix code? He gets distracted by the woman in the red dress, then Morpheus freezes the scene? Iconic stuff. Film nerds can trace this behaviour back to the French silent movie Paris Qui Dort of 1924 – or, of course, there’s the Adam Sandler movie Click. Although it’s probably best to pretend that last one never happened. The point is that, thanks to this cinematic and televisual trope, we have an ingrained sense that when something significant happens, our brains should be able to stop time entirely for a moment in order to allow us to process precisely what we’re seeing. Of course, time is a…

We’re quite used to seeing classic cars imported from South Africa to the UK these days. The warm and sunny climate there often means their survival rate is much higher than their UK counterparts and with classic car values constantly rising, many have ended up on these shores. While models available in SA often resemble those we had in the UK, the addition of certain native tweaks here and there along with a desirable badge we never had often tends to spark a little curiosity among seasoned enthusiasts. And while Ford fans drool over Cortina XR6 Interceptors and Sierra XR8s, it’s less widely known Leyland’s f lagship Mini was also treated to a unique South African makeover back in the ’70s. We bring you the Mini 1275 GTS. Andrew Grabowski…

t here’snothing wrong with mundanity if that’s your bag. Some people just don’t want the hassle of thinking about things too much, so they go with the mainstream and move on to the next decision. These are the people who paint the interior walls of their houses in default magnolia to save choosing a colour; who stick on a bit of Coldplay when they’ve got mates round because they just want a generic background noise they can ignore; who pave over their gardens because f lowers and shrubs require decisions to be made. Their lives are simple, unstressed, uncluttered. They’re also not very interesting, though, are they? Where’s the satisfaction in living an unremarkable life, never having the imagination to rock the boat? You’ve got to roll the dice a…

There have been electric conversions of classic cars before, but not like what’s being engineered by the team at Recharged Heritage. From the start, an enormous effort has been made to ensure that the conversion can easily be reversed, with the body remaining as original with no new holes – so the petrol engine can be put back in, no problem. The car has also been engineered so that it weighs no more than the original; the fun factor in driving a classic Mini has been preserved intact, and you don’t in fact need to buy the whole car. Customers can either have their own classic Mini converted, or purchase a model from Recharged Heritage and then have it electrified. Built entirely in the UK from its Padiham, Burnley and…

The team behind Fastest Mini in the World are delighted to announce that Mini Spares has become the lead sponsor for the 2023 FMitW race, a fixture that has become one of the mustsee and feature races at the Mini Festival Brands Hatch. This great milestone sees Mini Spares – the world’s leading supplier and manufacturer of classic Mini parts – getting right behind the race and its future ambitions of exploring its worldwide attraction and potential to expand overseas grid attendance. Justin Jeffery, Mini Spares Director, says: “After the growth of the race it’s a natural step for Mini Spares to become more involved in the race – it’s truly becoming a classic Mini racing phenomenon that attracts all derivatives of highly developed racing Minis. Our longstanding association with…

PROJECT PROFILE THE OWNER NAME: Mark Hodgetts AGE: 57 OCCUPATION: Classic Car Restorer LOCATION: West Midlands THE CAR: CAR: 1965 Morris Mini Cooper S START CONDITION: Complete car with rotten shell and some salvageable parts CONDITION NOW: Majority of welding and fabrication work complete TIME TAKEN SO FAR: 3 months ESTIMATED TIME OF COMPLETION: I don’t like to set a deadline for a project as it only adds to the pressure and stress! Step inside the workshop of Mark Hodgetts and you really do feel like you’ve been sent back in time 40 years. To any fan of classic cars, this is certainly no bad thing, and a quick tour reveals an array of retro projects along with many fabrication tools seldom seen in…

It hardly needs pointing out that Minis are quite light. That’s a core element of their make-up, the whole point is that they serve up a minimal footprint in all dimensions. But Adam Evans’ 1990 Rover really is something else. Taking lightness to its logical conclusion, it nigh-on has to be tethered to the ground with ropes to stop it f loating away. This is attributable in large part to Adam’s keenness for carbon fibre. You could say that he’s got a little a bit carried away; he wanted some carbon, and some became loads, until it was really almost everything. In order to explain the scientific appeal of the benefits, here’s a diverting experiment for those of you who are keen to earn your Blue Peter badge: take a…

Mini TECH The essentials for keeping your Mini on the road. 82 PRODUCTS A variety of Mini-themed goodies for you and your car 84 OUR MINIS Updates from our fleet -Tim’s latest adventures, and we welcome Ian’s new EV to the fold BEFORE STARTING The first rule of working on cars and using tools of any kind is don’t be stupid. Make sure personal protective gear – goggles, gloves, ear defenders, masks and a set of overalls - are hanging on a hook in your garage and use them wisely. If you’re working with power tools, protective gear is essential. Never attempt to work under a car without supporting it securely using suitably strong axle stands. If you haven’t got a fire extinguisher, buy one and keep it near to…

When you hear the word ‘limousine’, what immediately springs to mind? A stretched pink Chrysler on a hen do? The Lincoln Town Car at the Nakatomi Plaza? Clarkson in half a Fiat Panda? Whatever you’re picturing, it’s probably something quite long. And as you can see, the one-off Mini Limo is not long. It’s, well, Mini-sized. But footprint wasn’t the aim here; no, this was conceived to be something luxurious. Breaking cover at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show, Rover pulled out all the stops to create what they described as ‘the most sophisticated Mini’. Built by John Cooper Garages, it apparently cost over £50,000 to make. The aim was to demonstrate how many luxurious appointments could be squeezed into a car that was only tenfeet long, and the spec was impressive:…

hot hatch specials are two a penny these days, with manufacturers thinking nothing of junking non-essential standard kit – even the rear seats – to up the performance, tighten the handling and increase the presence of their models at track days across the country. But back in 2006, the idea of a numbered, two-seater version of the R53 MINI Cooper S, with unique suspension and bodykit, seemed nothing but a rumour throughout first-generation MINI production. However, when the GP was confirmed at the 2006 MINI United event in Misano, Italy, all the UK cars quickly sold out. Owners liked the giantkilling package, and in fact, it worked so well that BMW brought back the GP for the secondgeneration MINI in 2012, and more recently again in 2020, with the fastest…