Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i MiniWorld

When Alec Issigonis was pinning ideas to his ADO15 mood board back in the fifties, it’s unlikely that the words ‘performance’ or ‘luxury’ featured anywhere near the top of the list of aspirations for the Mini. Practical, sure. Affordable, of course. Mould-breaking, absolutely; with its front-wheel-drive layout, transverse engine and clever cabin that slots four adults into a ten-foot shell, it was always destined to be a success. But the conceptual leap from those early sketches to this month’s cover car is truly colossal. This 1275 GT, with its Clubman nose and spangly disco paintwork, is very much something from a different era – and the attention to detail is just staggering. You can’t hear the La Cucaracha air horns here, but Chuff’s gorgeous shoot showcases the details of this…

The Zabbar Autofest started with 80 vehicles in 2012, and the number of exhibits today has grown to over 300 cars on show, with the event being sold out ever since. Greater work has been ongoing to take this already big event to the next level, by appealing to a broader variety of car enthusiasts. The organising team also collaborates with philanthropic organisations to raise funds for vulnerable people within society. Past organisations supported include Puttinu Cares, ALIVE Charity Foundation, and ALS Malta+, among others. This year, we will be supporting one of our own: last December, one of our founding members, Chris Bonello, was involved in a devastating car accident, and therefore funds raised during this event will go to help him receive a bionic leg. This year we…

My love of cars started at a young age. My dad has been in the motor trade since the early 1970s, and from when I was around 4 years old I would go to the garage with him on Saturdays, and that continued right through my childhood and teenage years. When I left school in 1998 I started working at the garage and did my apprenticeship with him; he taught me the old-fashioned way of being a mechanic. We still work together to this day, we’re a family-run father-and-son team based in Streatham – we work on all makes of vehicle and do have a lot of customers bringing us their classic and retro cars to look after because of our passion for them. One day back in 1999 we…

Basil Welch has owned a Mk1 Mini Cooper S for decades, and is an active member of the Suffolk region of the Mini Cooper Register. Sadly he lost his wife, Anne, a few years ago and says that he had “just been pottering about since.” He knew that his friend, Jack Gray, was restoring an Innocenti Mini Cooper 1300 Export and kept a close eye on the project; when he saw the finished product he was very impressed. It was up for sale and was an ideal way for Basil to inject some more fun into his Mini life – after all, Anne had loved Minis too. “I was aware of it a little while ago,” explains Basil, who had only bought the Mini a few days before our photoshoot. “I…

Sidestepping the obvious is the key to success in the modifying sphere, and when Andrew Giles was mapping out how to give his Mayfair a unique motorsport twist, it seemed like a bit of a cliche to follow the semi-established path of backdating it to look like a Mk1 on the Monte. No, he drew inspiration from the rally scene around the era when this Mk6 was fresh and new, and the results are pretty fabulous. “I’ve always been into cars, and when I was growing up there were always framed photos of Minis in the house,” he recalls. “My dad owned three at different times in his early driving career, so naturally he had loads of stories about them. Also, by 2002, he’d built a Westfield kit car, one…

Carl Sagan, the eminent astronomer and cosmologist, once came out with this rather mind-bending quote: ‘If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.’ It’s a troubling notion for anyone of a creative persuasion, as it effectively strikes the concept of true originality firmly off the board. What he was getting at is that everything in existence is sitting at the end of a very long chain of actions and consequences; if you truly wish to take something back to first principles, it’s not just a case of unscrewing all the bits and seeing how it works. True originality can only come from jump-starting the second Big Bang and creating a whole new universe for yourself, crossing your fingers and hoping against hope…

The British Motor Corporation Competitions Department was set up in January 1955 under Marcus Chambers, with its first competition cars entered in the Monte Carlo Rally of that year – three MG Magnettes and three Austin A90s. It ran until 31st October 1970, but is still fondly remembered more than 50 years later. Mini Cooper Register and the Historic Marathon Rally Group combined to form the Abingdon Works Motorsport Celebration, to recognise the Department’s rally and sports car successes across three decades. The first display was planned in 2019; this year, it will be bigger and better than ever and located in a new area of the British Motor Museum site. The display, which takes place at the BMC & Leyland Show on Sunday 13th July, will feature a range…

Born in 1932, Cliff Humphries spent a lifetime surrounded by cars and engines, including working for the City Motor Company (Oxford) Limited, the MG Car Company Limited, (known affectionately as GEES) and much later being involved with building the power units for the formidable MG 6R4, before finally selling cars and engines from his home in Wantage. Always fascinated by things mechanical, on leaving school in the late 1940s Cliff joined the City Motor Company (Oxford) Limited under their apprenticeship scheme along with his best friend, Geoff Allen. The business had been established in 1919 by F.J. Adams and his brother-in-law N.F. Jones. It quickly expanded, and at the outbreak of WW2 it was requisitioned for military work. Hostilities over, the company continued to expand and it was here that…

The real tension within The Matrix that nobody really talks about is how it can actually be a bit of a drag to see the world as a stream of scrolling green code. As satisfying as it may be to operate within the centre of things and pull all the strings, Neo no doubt had a clinging perennial yearning to do something constructive with his hands; making a really decent roast dinner from scratch, perhaps, or screwing together a Billy bookcase. “I work in IT, so I wanted a classic project that was analogue and mechanical, a complete contrast to the day job,” Stu tells us, and that makes perfect sense. The Meccano-like logic of what makes up a Mini’s fundamentals has been keeping eager hands busy for generations. Interestingly,…

Hagerty’s Festival of the Unexceptional (FOTU) has proven itself to be a wildly popular format over the past decade or so, with the 2024 event welcoming a record 2000 cars. For 2025, FOTU will return to Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire on Saturday 26th July; entries for the Concours de l’Ordinaire have now been expanded to span 1970-2000 – and remember, they’re not looking for Coopers or 1275 GTs, this is more the realm of the City and the Sprite. www.hagerty.co.uk/official-events/hagerty-festival-of-the-unexceptional Contactus Send club, trade, motorsport and all other Mini news to: Email: mw.ed@kelsey.co.uk Post: Mini Scene, MiniWorld, Kelsey Publishing Ltd, The Granary, Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding, Kent, ME18 6AL UK…

In 2025, Tynemouth Mini Club celebrates its 21st anniversary. The club welcomes members of all ages from the whole of the North East, from the borders down to Teesside. They organise numerous events throughout the year, from static shows to driving days, with the annual cheese run to the Wensleydale Creamery being a members’ favourite. Each year they also nominate two charities and raise funds throughout the year. Enthusiasts in the North East can find more information on becoming involved with the club by emailing contact@tynemouthminiclub – or visit the website at www.tynemouthminiclub.co.uk…

Mini Day at Brooklands is something of an institution on the show scene, and for a lot of owners it’s their first major outing of the year, as it comes at a time when lots of Minis have only just emerged from their winter hibernation. This year, however, it did feel a little as if fate was conspiring against this age-old institution: the planned closure of the nearest section of the M25 caused all manner of traffic chaos, while the pessimistic weather forecast suggested a strong possibility of getting really rather damp. So yes, numbers were down a little on previous years, although the turnout was still remarkably strong and – as it always is – pleasingly diverse. The action up the hill was as entertaining as ever (if you…

It is only too easy to look over a Mini with a view to purchasing it and pay insufficient attention to the interior. The trim may well initially look quite reasonable, especially if the car as a whole is going to need anything from mild to major restoration work, but unless you are very lucky, this is likely to change significantly once the rest of the car is restored. What seemed very passable in a scruffy car will look very scruffy indeed in a repanelled and repainted car. This was certainly true in the case of the MiniWorld/BMH reshell project car back in the early 2000s; when the original Racing Green trim was fitted back into the new shell it looked terrible. Needless to say, that car ended up having…

Hopefully you enjoyed the introduction to the Mighty Minis race series in the March issue – it is great to finally get this series into MiniWorld. Throughout the season many teams are busy looking after their cars between races, however the winter period is by far the busiest time. Steve Rideout of Octane Racing runs a number of cars and has eight engines and gearboxes to rebuild. He is doing very well, to date completing five out of eight! My dad and I have been very busy sorting the engines and gearboxes for both cars; Chris from Ashton Autos has been fundamental in helping us with these upgrades, and Neil Slark has carried out all the machining work to the engines. We started off by rebuilding the gearboxes, out with…