RACING MINI ESTATES
Racing Minis are a common site in Historics. But Mini estates? Richard Meaden heads out on track in a unique pairing that take advantage of old homologation rules
Not your typical Goodwood grid line-up…
If there’s one type of car that’s guaranteed to pique our interest, it’s a souped-up estate. From the Sultan of Brunei’s mysterious collection of outlandish and unlikely coachbuilt shooting brakes to Volvo’s BTCC 850s that stole all the headlines (but none of the silverware), there’s something about a louche loadlugger that makes them very hard to resist. One man who knows this better than most is Mark Burnett. A keen Historic racer and Goodwood regular, Burnett – whose day job is managing director of Burlen Ltd, manufacturers of genuine SU, AMAL and Zenith carburettors – is the man behind this rather splendid pair of Mini Countryman and Clubman racers. He also has a fully race-prepared Ogle SX1000, but that’s another story.
Burnett’s admirably eccentric taste belies the fact that he’s a serious racer and a Mini man through and through. Not for him a couple of entertaining but ultimately empty projects without an end goal. He built these cars with a purpose: to race them hard, against the stiffest opposition.
His loadspace odyssey began with the Cooper S-spec Countryman before progressing (rapidly, it must be said) to the Clubman Estate. Both were built primarily with racing at Goodwood in mind – no surprise, considering the Sussex circuit’s well-known liking for offering grid slots to crowdpleasing cars – but one look at either tells you that these Minis are far from novelty acts.
It might come as a surprise to learn that the Countryman was homologated for racing. Though not, it should be said, because BMC harboured some secret desire to dominate circuit racing and stage rallying with its diminutive halftimbered estate car. Far from it, in fact, as the homologation appears to be due to a privateer Mini Countryman being raced in period.
Intrigued, and with an obvious vested interest to find out more, Mark Burnett dug around to see what he could uncover. Frustratingly, the machine largely remains a mystery.
‘To be honest, I’ve struggled to find anything of any detail,’ explains a mildly perplexed Burnett. ‘As far as I can tell it was just a wealthy guy who wanted to use a Countryman for competition. I suspect more for fun than anything else. Nothing I found anywhere suggests that it was ever raced in an International event or anything like that. But it was homologated, with an 850 engine and drum brakes, which of course is what it was back then.’
As Burnett concedes, this is hardly the spec you’d build to stick in a field full of full-race 1293cc Cooper Ss at Goodwood, but it provided a starting point for the project, which itself began as the germ of an idea hatched by the Countryman’s previous owner – Goodwood’s motorsport competitions manager, Will Kinsman.
‘Will and his brother, Alex, were going to restore it, but they didn’t get very far,’ explains Burnett. ‘It was a wreck. I’d been talking to Alex about buying a J40 for the Settrington Cup and he mentioned his and Will’s idea for the Countryman. He admitted it was too big a project for them, but wondered if I’d be interested. I said “No, that’s a stupid idea.” Two weeks later I was down at their workshop…’
The restoration is best described as extensive. The roof, bonnet, rear doors and one side panel were useable (just) but needed lots of work, while the floor and wings are new.