JUST THE WAY THINGS WERE

It seems that everyone had a Mini in the 1970s. That was simply the default choice.

One of the great things about having friends and colleagues roughly the same age as you is that you remember much the same stuff, and your parents more than likely had a similar car. And for most people in the 1970s, that was a Mini.

My dad’s first car was a 1965 Austin Mini Deluxe in Maroon that he bought with redundancy money in 1968 when I was about one. I don’t remember that, but I vaguely recall the Island Blue and White 1966 Morris Cooper 998 which came next, though not as well as the Glacier White 1970 1275GT that replaced it in 1972.

Before that came 542 EYC, a 1961 Mini Minor that arrived in early 1972. Up till then my folks shared a car, but this became impractical by the time I was nearing school age. Via the Yeovil Motor Club my parents became firm friends with an American mechanic called Bill Mather and his Scottish wife Nina, who lived just a couple of miles away. Bill worked at Vincents, the British Leyland dealer in Yeovil, and had a fast track to all the sorry part exchanges.

One was this knackered Mini which, whilst not too rusty, was pretty tired mechanically – 850 engines were OK, but those pre-baulk ring synchro Mini gearboxes needed a black belt in cognitive reasoning to engage gears on the move. It also had single leading shoe front brakes, the pudding stirrer gear lever and seats designed by Issigonis, the Greek God of discomfort, but it ran and drove and proved useful.

This was the era of the MOT failure 1100 where thousands of owners discovered to their horror that the sills were merely illusory and the rear subframe mountings might as well have been interpreted via the medium of dance. One such car – a 1964 Morris in Dove Grey – was given its last rites at Vincents at just eight years old and arrived home. With 48bhp, the 1098cc engine was a big improvement over the 850, plus it had a Cooper style remote gearshift. Fitting the 1098 unit was a weekend’s work, though after block and tackling it from the dead 1100, there was a fair bit of work to do before a Mini could benefit.

For a start, the 1100’s 12in wheels meant that it had a 4.1 final drive and this had to be replaced by the 3.7 from the Mini. The 1100’s radiator-side engine mounting plate had to be cut down and tidied up with a grinder, plus a hole had to be cut in the Mini’s floor for the new gearlever and holes drilled for the remote gearshift rear mounting. But the engine went in and, allied to a Peco exhaust, the Mini had a new lease of life and a dramatic increase in performance.

A company dealing in BL spares supplied a brand new twin leading shoe front brake set-up with driveshafts and brake hoses, all in a wooden crate with the BL logo. Imagine having that crate today, nicely varnished! Too many splinters in it to be a toy box for me alas. And yes, I’m still bitter about it.

Bill was also a magician with a spray gun and one warm weekend the Mini was wheeled into his garage, masked up, rubbed down and painted BL Flame Red. It looked pretty good, and over time it was tricked up with Cosmic wheels and the much prized Benelite grille – look it up, they're epic. By 1974 rust was getting a firm grip and the Mini was bought (minus Cosmic wheels) by a young blade with a very young licence. The whiff of a Mk1 Mini vinyl interior on a warm day brings it all back, though.

I was inspired to think along these lines today by Phil White’s column in the Spring issue. His dad did the same sort of thing, our mums drove the end results and none us were poor. Instead it was just the done thing by folk back then who were making their way in life and weren’t scared of getting stuck in. Have those days gone? I still do it, but at 56 I’m rapidly tiring of fighting old cars.

I tell you what has gone though – the days of repairable cars. BL stuff wasn’t of the highest quality, but armed with the Haynes Book of Revelations you could fix stuff. Just today I heard of a 2017 Astra with 40,000 miles that needed a £2000 timing chain replacement, a common issue on the 1.6CDTI. Like BMW and Audi, Opel decided that decent chains or timing belts weren’t quite German enough, so they put it at the flywheel end of the engine, requiring £1500 worth of labour. Genius.

It had single leading shoe front brakes, and seats designed by Issigonis, the Greek God of discomfort