The Non-Italian Job

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A few years back I decided it was about time I owned a Mini. To make things more interesting I thought I'd get an old broken one and fix it up, so I bought this rusty yellow £300 skip from a student who was going for the most-number-of-lies-told-during-a-financial-transaction world record. It was officially an 850 City, but there there was a far more powerful A+ living under the bonnet. With it's stumpy 10" alloys it had quite ridiculous performance and handling, certainly more than the standard drum brakes could handle. It was a rusty bodged-up deathtrap, the seller was untrustyworthy, so naturally I bought it. It's the kind of thing I do.

The front floor, wings, roof edges and rear subframe were all rotten, so I bought a load of pattern panels (tip: don't buy patterns if you want them to fit) and drove it up to my folk's place in Norfolk. Over the next 2 weeks, it was transformed from wreck to beauty:

New wing goes on; my brother Darren got lumbered with nearly all the welding, he loved that.

There he is on the right. You'll be unsurprised to learn that he's always a strong contender in the Watlington Village Idiot competition. On the left is my other brother Jonathan, who's pretending to help with the rear subframe. Tip: Don't paint subframes with Hammerite as it's prone to chipping, as I later discovered.
I cleaned off the underside and rustproofed it, another horrible job.
Another advanced car restoration process in progress...


Ready for paint
Complete! Lots of new chrome (from Mini in the Park), and brush-applied yellow paint - yes, really. It looked fine from a distance, at least.
The seller gave me some new number plates, which I'd stuck on without checking. It seems my friend couldn't even order new plates without telling some kind of lie though - he'd got the numbers in the wrong order!

When it was all done, I discovered I didn't really like the car. It was fine for a quick blast, but hopeless for any kind of distance; it was like travelling in a tumble-dryer. Mrs B worked in town though, so she got some use out of it for a couple of months (even driving it through the corridors of a disused hospital), before it was sold on.


We later heard from a friend of the buyer, apparently the wipers fell off as they drove it home. Quality workmanship!

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