‘Dream Car Delivery’
Gary Densham achieves a life’s ambition – adventure included
My dream car has always been a Mini Cooper S from the year I was born: 1967. I spent 10-12 years looking for one but, unable to afford a Cooper S, I settled for an 850cc Mini MKI in Almond Green. I've had a lot of fun with it, but it still isn't my dream car.
I regularly holiday in San Miguel de Salinas Spain, where I have a Skoda Fabia. I take this car to be serviced at a local garage owned by an English gentleman named Roger Taylor. Back in 2006, Roger had a 1967 Mini Cooper S in Island Blue in his garage that he had bought, which was in need of a full restoration. I made him an offer to purchase the car, however it was also his dream car and he would not sell it to me. Over the next few years I followed the restoration progress and continued to make offers to purchase it, while even offering him money to restore it for me.
In May 2019 while in Spain on holiday for my wife's birthday, we were out with mutual friends of Roger. They happened to mention that he was selling some of his classic car collection in order to fund the purchase of the unit that he currently rented for his garage. I was at the garage within the hour, I spoke to Roger and offered to purchase his car – the car of my dreams – which was now
fully rebuilt , having had a bare metal restoration, engine fully rebuilt to 1380cc, putting out 90bhp.
He agreed, however it had been converted to left-hand drive. I managed to persuade my wife to travel back to Spain with a right-hand steering column in her luggage. I collected the car a month later on Friday July 19, 2019, then test drove it over the weekend to sort out niggles prior to driving it home to England on the Monday. Roger and I spent the weekend sorting out some issues and a persistent small oil leak… then we were off! My wife and I left at 8am, first stopping at the airport to drop our Skoda Fabia off at Plane Parking where we keep it parked ready for our next visit. Then on to Zaragoza, some 400 miles away. Spain was experiencing extreme heat at this time with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees… not great for us with no air conditioning and a sliding window sash.
We managed to get to Zaragoza for our first overnight stop without any problems however. The next day we headed on into France, to Poitiers to be precise, which was another 400 miles under the wheels. We avoided all toll roads, which resulted in us seeing and enjoying the fabulous villages and country side of Spain and France while travelling at 50-60mph all the way.
Early riser
We started at 5am from Poitiers for our run to Calais. It was another 400 miles, and due to the extreme heat we decided to set off early morning in the hope of driving longer in cooler weather – good plan because we missed the very worst of the heat, which was affecting us more than the plucky little car. The car never missed a beat in fact, and performed faultlessly, we thoroughly enjoyed every minute of our journey in our 'new to us' classic 1967 Mini.
The Euro Tunnel to Newcastle upon Tyne was 420 miles, and we arrived at our home at 3pm on Thursday July 25. The car got a full valet and is now parked up in my garage standing on thick rubber mats, and wrapped up in a custom made cover alongside my Mini 850 and my 1992 Mercedes-benz SL 300 V6. Dream car achieved alongside a dream drive. ■