Unipower GT

GERRY HULFORD, www.unipowergt.uk, £39.95, 978 1 3999 0477 3

Gerry Hulford is no serial author, but he is a serial Unipower GT owner. He’s also the founder of the Unipower GT Owners Club, which dates back to 1972, and he states that this book is the culmination of ‘50 years of ownership and supporting the marque’. Yup, he’s well-qualified.

Into 170 or so medium-format pages he has packed the story of a car that was on sale for only four years, and of which only 73 were built. His sources are immaculate and the tale is one of ingenuity, opportunity and – sadly – the receivers.

Yet racing kept this mid-engined Mini-based sports car alive in the hearts and minds of many more than ever owned one, even though it was never designed with competition in mind. Due attention is paid to that, including full results. There is even a section on how best to tweak the car for track success.

Any criticisms? Well, there are a few unnecessary capitalisations in the text, some occasional lapses in grammar, even the odd typo. Fair enough: it’s not as though there’s a mighty publishing company with a team of editors behind it. Anyway, none of this should put off anybody interested in the Unipower story. Instead, you should revel in the plentiful and illustrative photographs, the fulsome appendices, even tabulation that lists the Unipower GT’s appearances in the press (yes, Octane is namechecked: issue 204, as you may recall).

More than anything, this is surely the most comprehensive attempt ever undertaken to tell the whole tale of this interesting and impressive British sports car. Whether it can really lay claim to being a ‘Mini Miura’ is largely irrelevant. What’s more significant is how this little car began as a humble set of components and was turned into something memorable and highly effective. Here’s a book to match, at a very fair price indeed.