Hello all,
So going way back to 2001 when I passed my test at 18, I scored a 1996 Sidewalk SPI for a first car. I'd been into cars of all sorts since my mum bought a Land Rover when I was about 11, and the Mini was always top of my list for my first car (although at 16, the first car I owned was actually a 1963 Morris Minor which sat in my garage for a year or two gathering dust and rust and then got hauled away by someone with more time, knowledge and funds than me).
I knew plenty about cars when I got the Sidewalk, but youthful exuberance got the better of me and the bubbling flaky scuttle wasn't enough to put me off. I did good duty for a few years, including going to the big smoke of London town a week after passing my test (growing up in rural Norfolk I had precious little city driving and no sat-nav in those days, so that was fun :) ) and carrying 6 mates around on a night out in Coventry. Amazingly I managed to run it with no water for a good couple of weeks before the head gasket went (at the toll booth for the Dartford crossing), fixed that up with help from my cousin. And my new girlfriend was impressed enough with it to marry me a few years later.
Sadly it bit the dust in 2004 (ish) when the rust got too much for the MOT man; no idea if it was binned or put back together. Then as things tend to go, life got in the way, I needed a reliable runabout and Minis and other such fun things took a back seat. Now I have a degree, a proper job, a wife and daughter and a bit of money put by. Once we've found a house to buy, I should be in a position to put something more fun than boxes and odd bits of furniture in the garage.
I know roughly what I'd like from a Mini - 1960s style, racey enough to be enormous fun but still easy to live with. I've been reading Petrol's 998 screamer build thread and it ticks a lot of my boxes (so to speak :) ). I like the idea of a 998 or 1098 rather than a 1275 for some reason. I definitely want to keep it pure Mini with some added flourish, so no engine swaps, turbos and the like. Ideally I'd start with a nice Mk 2/3 Cooper S but I doubt the budget would stretch, but I think that would be roughly where I'd be aiming for the basic concept, with some modern refinements for safety/practicality/performance.
In my head it would start off as a warmish fast road spec, with the odd track day, but I'm not really bothered about out-and-out performance. I'd love to do some hillclimbs or autocross, but more for the fun than to compete (unless I shared the car with someone else on race days, then it would be all guns blazing!). Certainly that would be down the road a little, if at all. As Petrol Pete put it in his rebuild thread, a refined go kart would fit the bill very well.
Now, where to start...
