1996 rover MINI COOPER SPORT
Ahhh, my first love...? Everyone remembers their first. Mine was gifted to me on my seventeenth birthday by my father, a bright red, mid nineties Mini Cooper Sport, complete with wheel arch extensions, full length sunroof, leather interior.
I’d been through an interesting trajectory at school. By judgement of my peers, at first I was too fat, then too thin - there’s no pleasing angsty teenagers, I concluded. Not particularly athletic, not academically gifted - just ‘good enough’ across the board. Talent, such as I may be so bold to claim to have, in the workshop, would come later. A keen musician, interested mostly in 70’s rock music, stubbornly wearing double denim against a Lacoste tracksuit backdrop; later a James Dean leather jacket, when you can imagine most of my classmates had no idea who he was. I suppose that stubbornness was eventually some kind of ‘cool’... Quietly I knew that my moment would come when we had cars. The boy with the BMX will always be out-gunned by the boy with the Mini, I thought.
I did all my driving lessons in that car, passed my test in it and the examiner spent most of the test discussing her own Mini, and all their foibles. It put me at ease, and I did pass, first time.
The first taste of freedom, that first solo flight - I know where I went, I know what I was wearing, I remember the heat from the sun and the smell of the flowers coming in through the open roof as I was driving - driving - through the country lanes.
I loved the bones of that Mini. I drove it hard, every day, as Saturday became the day devoted to repairing whatever bush or bearing I’d managed to wear out that week. I carried out all the usual improvements - solid mounted front subframe, additional RetroSport engine steady, a stainless steel exhaust to replace the rusted standard unit. Innocenti headlamp rings. Polyurethane bushes, Koni dampers, trimmed the usual ‘nose down’ stance Mini’s have from collapsed front suspension with some adjustable rear units. An enormous subwoofer that filled the boot, and made spacers for the boot latch to stop the lid from rattling when in use. I had summer Yokohama Semi-slick tyres, and some surviving 80’s Goodyear Ultragrip tyres for the Winter on Weller wheels. I had 10” wheels, 13” wheels, disc brakes for each setup and thought nothing of changing them depending on the mood of the day.
We were inseparable. That car and I went everywhere: Stafford, Goodwood, Donnington, Silverstone; we saw stock car races, touring car races, AC/DC and Status Quo concerts, horses in the New Forest and the bright lights of… Skegness. It ferried me to and from sixth form college. It took my girlfriend and I to all the dates of our early relationship. It carried me, my now-wife and our brand new (but very poorly) infant son from hospital, to nursery school, to home again, and around and around we went. For the better part of a year, when my wife and son lived at Norwich hospital, it carried me up and down the A140 at least four times a week, mostly returning in the small hours of the morning. And it never, ever missed a beat.
The power - or rather, lack of, was all part of the charm too. It would (I imagine) hit 90mph in third gear, and 91 in fourth - just not quite enough grunt to pull the tall final drive the late cars came with from factory. This simply encouraged you to use the gearbox, keep the engine in the scant power band.
Very at home in a long second gear, where eventually, the famously weak synchro ring gave up, and I had to get the change down from third ‘just right’ to avoid crunching the gears.
The build quality was shocking. Legend has it that when the bare shells were painted at the factory, the scuttle panel was primed in a ’stripe’, missing the raised edges of the windscreen surround, such that you never see an unrestored 90’s Mini without rot in that area. Gallons of wax underbody protection preserved most if the usual areas, along with a stubbornly leaking selector seal that coated the front subframe in a film of oil. The front seats both collapsed, which was odd given that the passenger seat was mostly empty. Like every other Mini on the planet, the rear subframe crumbled to dust before my eyes.
The famously appalling ride quality. Whether we like to admit it or not (and we don’t), the ‘BMW’ Mini was an infinitely better car in every measurable sense. I’ve always felt it’s the car the Mini should have evolved to naturally - as per the Golf family tree - BMW took a 1950’s design that was an alternative choice at the end of production, and brought it up to date. The successful design of the ‘MINI' speaks for itself in volume alone.
The original won, however, because it was cool. No question. Like aviator sunglasses, sundresses and big floppy hats, the Rolling Stones and clean teeth, the Mini will never, ever go out of style.
I also appreciated the lower maintenance and usability of the MPI system over an earlier model, regular oil and filter replacement and adjustment of tappet clearances kept the engine sweet. No choke on cold days to 'stick on', no clothes peg required here to keep the cable out. It was wholly reliable. Economy and lean-burn also helped my fast-emptying back pocket.
And the handling. Oh my god, the handling. You didn’t drive that car so much as wear it like a pair of training shoes. It pivoted in the middle and just gripped - the minimal weight and famous ‘wheel in each corner’ handling complimented my sometimes-exuberant driving style.
‘Flickable’ is an understatement - you drove the car feeling every giant-killing Monte Carlo win in every fibre. It was utterly, utterly magical. Every day, whilst it was a working car, I was Paddy Hopkirk.
Right up until the accident. I had a bad shunt in the car, which at the time I blamed on a oncoming van driver. With age comes wisdom, and I suppose the blame is… Debatable. But I mourned and grieved like I’d lost a real friend. I rebuilt it after a year or two, and sold - everyone says it, and I felt it - it was never quite the same after that.
For all of the above reasons, in my opinion the sweet spot for the Mini market is a properly restored late 90’s Cooper Sport. I know the earlier cars are most coveted; I’ve pondered for some time as to whether the value hike is sustainable as those who remember Paddy first time around leave the classic car market. The fact is I’ve simply never bonded with a car quite like mine. A good one is now a five-figure car - and I’ve had my first, but I’ll be damned if it’s my last, MPI Mini.