The senior member of the fleet
On 9th April 1985, a young dark-haired Peter Simpson presented himself at the editorial offices of Practical Classics, which were then above an insurance broker’s office opposite Beckenham Junction railway station. After one term as probably the worst school teacher ever, I’d somehow landed my dream job as a trainee journalist on my favourite motoring magazine.
Fast-forward now to 2024, and that young man has somehow become a greyhaired 60-something husband and dad. But I’m still in historic transport publishing, and still loving it, even though these days I write mainly about larger vehicles with diesel engines and often rather more than four wheels! But classic cars remain my first love. The current collection numbers six, although two of these are magazine project cars which may or may not remain after coverage has finished. One is the 1965 Morris Minor Traveller that’s running as a project car here, the other is a 1955 MG Magnette that’s currently appearing in MG Enthusiast. The core collection comprises a 1958 Hillman Minx, 1970 Rover P6 3500, 1990 Volvo 240 estate and 1992 Rover 827 Coupé. I’ll tell you about all four in due course, but we’ll kick off with ‘Minxy.’
As well as being the oldest car in the permanent collection, 697 CKJ is also the one I’ve owned longest, for just over 32 years in fact. I bought the car in late 1991, though we’d first met a few years earlier. In the late 1980s I was commuting daily to Beckenham from the Medway Towns. There, a local Rootes enthusiast named Bob Green uncovered a 29,000mile 1958 Hillman Minx in a garage following the owner’s death. He subsequently bought the car, had it recommissioned and the bottom half repainted by a local repair and restoration company I was using for magazine content at the time.
Bob subsequently swapped the car with the restorers for a full rebuild on one of his other cars. They kept it for a couple of years before entering it for Lambert & Foster’s December 1991 classic car auction where, somewhat to the surprise of the firm in question, I bought it.
Since then the car has had periods in use and periods in
storage, and in the early days of my ownership it travelled to Scotland and Wales. Then, in 2000 and just a few months after we’d met, my other half Sarah and I took Minxy to Northern Ireland for our first holiday together. On that trip Minxy also ventured abroad as we nipped over the border into Donegal, where the water pump promptly failed! This necessitated a rapid return to the UK where AA Recovery was available, and where Royal Mail Special Delivery could deliver a water pump overhaul kit from Sussex within 24 hours. But it can’t have been that bad, because Sarah and I are still together, and we have a 17 year old daughter and 15 year old son.
By 2018, however, Minxy – though still unusually original – was starting to get a bit tatty around the edges. She wasn’t awful, but did need taking in hand then if her originality was to be saved. Andy Usher, a good friend of mine who previously managed Stanley Mann’s Bentley restoration workshop, took it on and did an excellent job. Some of this was featured in the bodywork repair series in this magazine a couple of years ago.
As usual in such cases, the further we dug the more problems were revealed, and we ended up making extensive repairs to the sill and front floorpans and all the hidden structural stuff underneath. As next to nothing is available in the way of replacement panels and repair sections, Andy had to make pretty much everything from scratch; this involved a lot of skill and effort to make everything exactly right while also retaining as much original material as possible.
The Seacrest Green bottom half has been repainted; I was happy to do this as it had already been done once during the 1980s refurb and was therefore no longer original. The Pearl Grey top, however, hasn’t been touched as it’s still the original 1958 paint, and though not perfect in absolute terms, its Ryton-applied originality and patina really must be conserved.
Then, with the bodywork completed, we discovered that what I’d thought was a simple ignition-related misfire was caused by almost zero compression on number one cylinder, and the old oil-in-thebore technique confirmed the issue was bore related rather than top end. So the engine came out for a full rebuild, which also revealed that the clutch was on its last legs. Then it seemed a bit silly to put a new-looking engine back in without also restoring the engine bay...
Anyway, the net result of all this is that Minxy is now very nice indeed, and when I took it to a local show back in the summer, it was spotted by Tom Clark, the shows organiser for the Hillman Owners Club, who subsequently asked if the club could have it on their stand at the 2023 NEC Classic Motor Show, where I have to say it did look pretty good and seemed to go down well with the visitors. Future plans include renovating the boot space and a bit of sympathetic interior refurbishment.
Minxy wasn’t, however the only Simpson Fleet representative at NEC 2023. Also in Hall 5, and just a few stands away, my Rover 827 Coupé was also flying the flag. But I seem to have reached the bottom of the page, so that story will have to wait until next time.