Vince's first steps

Having restored a few cars in my time from Triumph Heralds to Renown’s etc I was aware of the old adage “buy the best you can afford, it’s cheaper than the repairs”.

Triumph Herald  Mk1	Triumph Renown Limosine

However, there are not that many Automatic MINI with climate and leather to be found so MUM (the last 3 characters of her registration) was purchased from Merton, London and driven home to await a full review and work list.

By comparison with many cars featured in magazines such as Modern MINI, MUM has had very little work done to her at least mechanically speaking.   In fact most of that work focused on a major service and some minor preventative work under the bonnet dealing with replacing the water bottle and the thermostat housing.  The various forums supplying the incentive with stories of overheating engines. 

All that was required after this was a campaign of repairs to the body work.

Drivers door rear	Front bumper passenger side	Bonnet passenger side

The problem with that simple plan is that MUM would have been “just another MINI”, so this posed the question "what to do"?

So many options and so much inspiration from the great cars that adorn magazines, but as great as they are they have all been “done”, or at least if they are featured in a magazine they have  been.

It was when I was debating the perennial question, “Austin Mini v New MINI” with friends that the observation came up, "it’s a shame they didn’t make the New MINI look more like the old one".  Well despite the fact I think they did, and seem to have deviated more as time has gone on, (my daughter calls it progress) the inspiration came to me to make subtle adjustments to MUM to capture more of those classic features.

Read More: Vince - Austin v MINI

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