Mini Memories. What are yours?

[Hooli]

I'd love a Mini but not at today's stupid prices.

[mercrocker]

There's a Cooper Sport LE on one of the local dealer's sites. 21 Fucking Grand!

[Asimo]

1977, summer night shift, I'm driving a Clubman Panda car to some shout, blue light on. Five other coppers on board. (Despite being 6'2" I could drive minis with my helmet on. That's how fucked the seats were) Flat-out round the ring road, down hill toward the roundabout.
I learn what brake fade is: hard pedal, normal braking to no braking in one brown-trousery moment.
Just keep it on the road, no one about thank fuck & I don't say anything, no one else does...

Another night & there's a bunch of pissed lads making noise in the street outside a rugby club. I'm on my own in the mini van, J plate, the oldest we've got. Doesn't go well, they're not interested in my advice and I decide to fuck off sharpish. Van won't start, lads gather round smelling revenge.
Cacking myself, crinkly grin to max I push my luck, "give us a push lads" and we are off. All that testosterone, muscle and lager shove the poxy van down the street and I get the best bump start ever. All the aggro is gone, we're all mates, good night, take it easy, job done.

Exhaust fell off not long after and I never drove it again

[FhakeConcern]

I'm about 6 foot and drove to Cornwall for a weekend in 1st Blaze Mini with my 6 foot 2 mate who had his leg in a full plaster cast and his guitar also his 5 foot 10 girlfriend and my gf (now Mrs Concern) in the back. Never found it uncomfortable.
In the same car driving at night to Bromley from Chislehurst on the main road down a steepish hill to 90 degree bend (now a roundabout I think) I noticed a wide arched Mk1 Escroteclose behind. Think nothing of it and carry on as usual around the bend at the same speed. Glance in mirror to see the Escrote sideways, backwards, sideways again haha. Didn't see it again. Same sort of thing a couple of times in one of the 1275GTs with Crapis trying to catch me around the one way system in Croydon. I'm not a great driver, just that the Mini would go round easily when the Fords gave up!
I got the head worked over on the Mini 1000 and the speedo would go right round to the fuel guage I can't find a pic now, only this slower one.
Prbably about 70mph in reality haha

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[FhakeConcern]

Another silly memory, when I bought the Tara greem 1275GT I spent the next day cleaning and polishing. As well as the usual 2p pieces, I found a polaroid picture of a naked lad with the smallest cock I've ever seen wedged inside the Rokee dash!

Polaroid pics are surprisingly hard to tear in half.

[mercrocker]

I was born the week the Mini was launched so have literally grown up with them. My earliest memories of being in a car without my parents was being taken down the beach in Mum's friend's Countryman - well before I started school. My first holiday with a mate as opposed to the rest of the family was a decade or so later when he borrowed his Dad's Clubman Estate and we went to Camber Sands for the week - a real rite of passage where I managed to pull a married bird the week after I had left school....

Apart from the shitboxes I recounted earlier in the thread, my Dad's younger brother was a Mini nut (quite literally) and went through several Mk1 saloons and vans before taking the last one over to Finland to begin a new life. The car didn't last long - he crashed it ice racing. Many years later, my sister married a Canadian Mini fanatic who also used to ice-race them - rather more successfully and they only gave up the seasonal racing circus when my sister was on her second baby and third pregnancy and called it a day. They still have a much-planned but little-done Traveller project although he recently sold his 1340 Cooper S which he must have had for 30 years or so. Travelling down the 401 in Ontario at wheel-nut height to 70mph Kenworths was perhaps not the best Mini memory I have but we did some great car shows over there with it.

My own 40th birthday was spent at the Mini 40th Anniversary at Silverstone, along with Canadian brother in law and I remember watching some Rover film promo on the forthcoming "New Mini" feeling than an era was definitely passing into history. I actually scraped up the deposit for a 2000 run-out injected Mini but thought better of it. I still have all the letters and brochures the local dealership pestered me with....

[JimH]

82 Mini City E in champagne. Bought in 92 as an MOT failure for fifty quid and put a new rear sub frame in it. Ran it four four years doing 90 miles a day when I was at university. Loved it dearly and was genuinely heartbroken when its body gave up the ghost.

[BusmansHoliday]

The most enlightening trip I had in a Mini was cowering in the back seat as my two 6 foot plus mates drove it through Sheffield. They weren't driving that fast, BUT.....



it was an ex driving school car and was fitted with dual foot controls and they had decided that the one in the passenger seat would operate the pedals and gears and the other would just steer. How the fuck we didn't hit anything I'll never know.

[Warren t claim]

I had a Tara Green 1275GT complete with a Rokee dash. Back in those prep smartphone days I was trying to impress a lady so I took a poloroid naked selfie to post through her letterbox. On. My way to her parents house I hit a pothole and my sexy pic fell down behind the dash. I tried to fish it out with a wiper blade but without any luck.

[Hooli]

Well we know who had that car later Warren..

I found a polaroid picture of a naked lad with the smallest cock I've ever seen wedged inside the Rokee dash!