Somewhere around 1997, Kim and I were looking at Minis. This is not news, however one of the cars we looked at is newsworthy – and my memory of it was prodded uncomfortably last week.
Unlike many people who were Mini-shopping, we didn’t really care how old/new it was – as, at the time, any Mini would’ve been awesome. We were looking at 70s Minis and 80s Minis, as well as terrorising the local Rover dealer for a shiny brand-new metallic orange Mini.
On one sunny day, we found ourselves in picturesque Tunbridge Wells to look at a late-70s Mini 1000. “Original paint, no rust, low miles”, it said. This is normally lies, but lies can be interesting so off we went.. ad in hand. Sure enough.. the car looked good. The paint was a little faded, and it only had 60k-or-so miles on it.. and there certainly weren’t any gaping holes of death in either the floor or the A-panels.. so it was worth a test drive.
At this stage, it is worth pointing out that the car was parked on the street at the bottom of two hills. The guy (somewhat trustingly) gave us the key, said “have at it”, and off we trundled.. up hill, down dale, round the roundabout, and through the countryside. Eventually, it was time to return – and, as we arrived at the top of the hill, the test drive turned into a cartoon. Mini brakes aren’t great, but we discovered we had none.. so as we careened down the hill at 35, maybe 40mph, we remembered that the car lived at the bottom. Much pedal-mashing later, we sailed past the cars’ home and straight up the hill the other side… stopping about halfway up. “I know! We’ll roll back down!”. So.. several iterations of this genius scheme later.. we finally stop somewhere near the intended driveway and run away back to our own, brake-having car.
What have I missed out? The Mini was this glorious colour:
It’s called “sandglow”, and looks like baby vomit. This Jag is for sale, and with that paintwork I expect it will be for some time.
