Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i Mini Magazine

Minis in unfamiliar places is an underlying theme of this month’s issue. Or perhaps more accurately, unfamiliar Minis in unfamiliar places, because we’ve got a rare Portuguese Mini IMA rebuilt in Holland, an English Riley Elf being restored in a Slovenia and an early slab-front 1275 GT that was one of the very few sold in Italy! There’s certainly a very international flavour going on, and that’s without including our report on the Balkan Mini Day from page 32. That’s far from all though, for we’ve got four more main feature cars for you this month, making a total of seven - the most you’ll find in any classic Mini magazine. This month’s cover star is owned by 24-year-old George Harris, who has mixed historic racer styling cues with a…

The National Mini Cooper Day is always a great event, but when the sun is shining, it’s truly next-level. Fortunately June 11 proved to be one of those special occasions, with this Mini Cooper Register flagship graced by glorious weather as fantastic cars and a host of famous personalities passed through the Beaulieu gates. The main arena played host to some amazing cars, but the headline act had to be the hugely impressive 26-strong display of MkII Cooper and Cooper S models to celebrate 50 years of the MkII model, including a mix of standard cars, modified examples, survivors and even Honorary President Mike Cooper’s own red MkII S. Opposite was a special ‘Sawn not SORN display, featuring a collection of chopped, sprinted, sectioned and modified Minis organised by Graham…

July 30 Colchester to Yarmouth Run Colchester Mini Club invites all Minis on its run from Essex to Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast. www.colchesterminiclub.co.uk August 4-6 Cambridge International Mini Chill Relaxing camping weekender, held at Marley Eternit Social Club near Royston, Herts. Includes evening entertainment and top facilities. www.cambsminichill.co.uk August 5 Under the Mini Moon New event held in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, organised by Bristol Mini Drifters. Includes a Mini cruise, show and shine, entertainment, traders, camping and more. Proceeds go to the Make a Wish Foundation. undertheminimoon@yahoo.com August 6 The Thames Valley Classic Mini Tulip Tour New event with a tulip navigation Mini tour of the picturesque Thames Valley, organised by Thames Valley Mini Club. tt@tvmc.org August 13 Mini in the Park Brilliant Mini event at Santa Pod. Camping…

As Minis go, a Hayabusa-powered Z Car with close-on 200bhp and an 11,000rpm red line is one heck of a difficult act to follow. With its race car features, cool styling and ballistic turn of speed, George Harris’ creation made for an impressive hybrid, if you could catch it for long enough to take a proper look. But sometimes there’s more to Mini ownership than outright pace, so when it came to his next build, George was keen to take a more rounded approach. Well, that’s sort of how it happened anyway. The Hayabusa was a real show-stopper and starred in our July 2015 issue, but George sensibly decided to part company with it and invest most of the proceeds into a house. But you can’t go squealing round roundabouts…

No matter where you wake up in the world, there’s a fair chance there’ll be a Starbucks nearby serving coffee from identical cups, and the cars outside will be instantly recognisable. But it hasn’t always been this way; rewind three or four decades and even an established global icon like the Mini had its cultural differences. They were being produced all over the world with a varying degree of locally-sourced components, and these subtle differences ensured one country’s Minis could easily be distinguished from another’s. It also served to make them fascinating to outsiders – a phenomenon that has only gained pace as more information about different variants has been shared. The sharp-suited Italian Innocenti Minis, for example, are now revered all over the world as probably the best of…

COST £224.10 TIME Allow three hours CONTACT Mini Spares 01707 607700 www.minispares.com DIFFICULTY No one likes to be stranded with a boiled Mini at the best of times, but throw in hotter summer temperatures and increased traffic, and there’s a greater risk of it happening. Overheating can cause all sorts of costly engine damage, including head gasket failure and even warping of the cylinder head and/or engine block. When kept in good condition and of the right specification to deal with your engine, the Mini’s cooling system is reliable. However, it’s prone to neglect, and there are also a great deal of folk who uprate their Mini’s engine without paying any attention to the cooling set-up. The standard radiator is only just adequate for a stock 1275 motor, so anything…

How long do you reckon the average Joe hangs on to a brand new car? We’ve researched it for at least five minutes and the general consensus is around five years. Once those shiny new cars hit their perilous fifth birthday, hefty dual-mass flywheel and cam belt replacements looming, that’s apparently time to abandon ship. Obviously someone forgot to tell the Mini scene, Stacey Hextall especially. “I’ve had the car for over 25 years now, ever since I first passed my test at 17,” says long-term Mini fan Stacey, who’s no intention of ever moving on. “I only paid £200 for the car in the late ‘80s, and it was a mint little 998 when I first got it. It was a funny creamy beige colour, so I started doing…

• The Italian Job charity tour is going back to its roots in 2017, with pit-stops in Bologna, Imola, Modena, Venice and Turin. One of the highlights this year will include a very special private visit to Pagani to see how these stunning automobiles come to life. The small factory where these iconic supercars are hand-built is as perfectly formed as you might expect – see our February 2017 issue for Mini Magazine’s interview with founder Horacio Pagani . This is the 28th annual Italian Job event and since the first run in 1990, it’s raised an impressive £2.5million for children’s charities across the UK and from wherever teams come. Planning is already underway for the 30th anniversary Italian Job in 2019, and the organisers have some extra special surprises in…

The cars may be familiar, but the sweltering heat and the myriad of country codes on the numberplates are not. And neither is the cheap beer, breathtaking scenery and free tanks of petrol. Welcome to the Balkan Mini Meeting, Mini Club Serbia’s annual gathering of enthusiasts from all over the region, and often way beyond. Since it first took place in 2009, this popular annual bash has attracted participants from a whopping 40 countries! Taking place from June 30-July 2, this year’s event saw representatives from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, England, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia and even Australia take part. The club keeps things fresh by changing the programme each time, with the emphasis on heading south towards Serbia’s mountains this time…

HOME BREW Name: Kai and Kerry Bailey Car: 1987 Mayfair Location: Kent • This is the Mini I built over a period of about four years or so for my wife Kerry (although I forget it’s her car sometimes!) It’s a 1987 Mayfair auto that turned out to have a Metro 12H908 engine and transmission fitted. It was also on 12-inch wheels. We saw it for sale on the way home one evening, and I bought it for £750 the following day. We ran the car for the summer, and when it failed the MoT test, I pulled it into the garage and started to look at ‘doing it up’. This turned out to be a complete rollover rig resto! I did all of the work myself within my home…

As time passes, fewer and fewer of us will have experienced what it was like to own a classic Mini Cooper as a brand new car. The famous go-faster label was absent from the UK range for 31 of the Mini’s 51 years in production, and even though Rover brought it back for a second 10-year stint in 1990, that would still come too soon for enthusiasts like Ian King. He was only 18 years old when the final cars rolled off the line in 2000, so the chance to become the first name on the V5 for a sparkling new Cooper Sport 500 was too much of a stretch for his teenage wallet! But it’s not like he hasn’t made up for it since. A keen collector, Ian purchased…

This is the tale of two Minis and two men who have made their mark on the Mini scene in very different ways. Like many a gripping Hollywood plot it has its lows, highs and great endeavour against improbable odds. It is all played out by characters who see it through to the final twist, where the plot comes round full circle. It all begins in 1969. The Abingdonbased BMC Competitions Department, with its mighty all-conquering Mini Coopers S in the line-up, saw its five-year reign in international rallying threatened by cars from Porsche, Saab and Ford. The team entered the Circuit of Ireland Rally with five-time former winner Paddy Hopkirk at the wheel and Tony Nash navigating. The Mini chosen for the event was GRX 311D, a 1275 Cooper…

NOISY FILTER Q My Mini has a modified 1330cc engine with a single HIF44 carb, ITG filter and twin-box RC40 Millennium exhaust system. I love the induction noise with the ITG filter, but it gets tiring on long journeys. Is there anything I can do to quieten down the noise inside the cabin, short of changing the filter? Sam Sims A You would need some serious, heavy-duty sound deadening material on the engine side across the bulkhead, and on the inside behind the dash cards to make any reasonable difference. That is one of the downsides to using filters that leave the carb mouth basically open – not at all helped by the transverse engine orientation so the carb mouth is pointing directly at the cabin and its occupants! One…

• Somerset-based Mini owners took advantage of the recent good weather with a couple of runs around the picturesque local lanes, organised by Andy Knight, owner of the fabulous ‘Chop’ wood effect Mini featured on the cover of the March 2015 issue of Mini Magazine. The most recent run took place on Friday 23, and saw a convoy of eight Minis enjoy an hour-long cruise around the country lanes before converging at Ham Hill near Yeovil for drinks and food. The popularity of the runs has lead to a creation of a new Facebook page,; search for “Evening Mini Runs’ should you want to get involved.…

For the third year running, British Mini Club brought together two iconic marques for its increasingly popular Midsummer Mini and VW Bus Meet, which took place at DK Rugby Club near Kingswinford on June 25. The event caters for all Minis and MINIs, together with VWs from the earliest Type 2 right up to the current model. With three times as many visitors camping over on the Saturday night compared to last year, folk were keen to take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere and make a weekend of it. They could enjoy a live band ahead of Sunday’s main event, which was a particularly busy affair. There were club stands for both marques, special parking areas and a Show ‘n’ Shine competition where the cars were judged by fellow participants.…

“There was only one Elf in Slovenia, and that was part of a private collection...” The Mini was always a truly global product, built under licence in many different locations around the world from almost day one and sold just about everywhere else. But the badge-engineered Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet were exclusives to the UK market, and not overly popular ones at that – the press were far from impressed at first, and sales of both models accounted for a little over three per cent of total Mini production from 1962-69. Of course, fortunes have reversed since then. These quirky luxury editions have a long-standing following in the UK, but things have moved a little slower overseas. When Slovenian Mini fan Gregor Obronek first caught sight of one while…

There’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind and keep a project on track, but sometimes it’s best to keep that target date on the down-low. That way the pressure’s off, and if things slip, your completion date can quietly follow suit. But let’s suppose you don’t do that, and announce an ambitious deadline in, say, an international car magazine? That’s just what Dutch pals Cyril Rothkrantz and Erik Mels did. When we visited the pair for an ‘On the Job’ feature late last year, they vowed that Cyril’s Mini estate would be on the road in time for the International Mini Meeting in Ireland this May. But having confessed to missing “about 15 deadlines” already, we weren’t about to bet our life savings on the pair getting the…

After a week of torrential rain and a cyclonic weather bomb, the fine weather for the start of the 2017 Pork Pie Charity Run on Good Friday was a welcome relief for the 60 teams taking part. Only 24 hours before, Cyclone Cook hit the top of the North Island of New Zealand, and though not as bad as predicated, it was still enough to close the two roads leading to Kaitaia – the start point for the run. The main road was closed by a big slip, and the alternative route was cut off by flooding. By late Thursday morning, the main road was open again and the teams could at least arrive at the starting point! This year was the fifth biannual event. The run follows the route…

KEITH CALVER Keith has been Mini Magazine’s tech expert since we launched in 1996. Keith’s Mini CV speaks for itself: he joined the motorsport scene as a Miglia competitor in 1978, before a five–year stint at the Mini Spares Centre (London) in the early ’80s. Now independent, Keith builds race engines for numerous disciplines. His 1275 GT race car and sharing his vast amount of Mini knowledge are also main focuses. A short while back, we had a look at the basics of the cooling system and what is involved to collectively cool your Mini’s engine. Cooling, or perhaps more correctly as pitched by many, overeating, is a subject that crops up an awful lot where Minis are concerned. There are mainly two reasons for this occurrence. First, running freshly-rebuilt…