So what got you into cars and minis?
Turbo Mini Forums

So, following on from this thread:

http://www.turbominis.co.uk/forums/index.php?p=vt&tid=163605


I was thinking back to my early days getting into minis and the cars that inspired me. One particular car was Martin Hadland's turbo in Fastcar magazine which was featured as part of a readers minis competition. A bit of research to find the article brings me straight back here to good old TM!

I've always been interested in cars. I moved to essex when i was 12 and grew up around fords and the cruising on southend seafront. Actually wanted a mk2 escort when i was younger but moved on from that. As i started driving, the kids with cash got xr2s or 3s, 205 gtis, r5 ggt and the like. There were a few cossies kicking about too. I've always liked moddified cars and Q cars in particular. Remember 1 mk1 escort in bronze running a cossie engine. Other than a set of wheels and a tail pipe, it looked standard but it would embarass a few to say the least!

For years i actually wanted a mini van but couldn't find a good one in my budget ( £300!) and bought my first saloon, a 77 in blaze with a 1275 in it. Had a lot of fun with that!

So what inspired you and got you into cars and into minis?

My family have always had minis. A year before I was born my parents bought a brand new clubman, which carted around myself and my sister a year later.

By the time I learnt to drive, I wasn't really into minis. Instead, I bought myself a Renault 5 GTL 1400 which I loved.

5 years later I find myself in need of a car to get me to and from a new job. My dad lends me a mini Chelsea that he bought from a barn for £100. Now, the journey from my parents house to the new job was all twisty country lanes. Needless to say I was instantly in love with the Chelsea.

The inspiration to eventually go turbo was Matt Woods' mini in a video on Streetfire.

In the 13's at last!.. Just

i thought minis were crap. was saving for a honda civic(CRX). After writing off my car i borrowed my wee brothers mini. i then crashed that. I had no option but to use my little savings to fix his mini. (this taught me how to weld lol) so all i had left was enough money to buy a bucket of a mini and fix it for myself. and i still have that mini

turbo 16v k-series 11.9@118.9 :)

Denis O'Brien.

What got me into cars:- necessity
What/who got me into minis:- Micheal Cane.

If I didn't learn how to fix it, it was not getting fixed. Never had the luxury of a friendly garage or mechanic to help me out. A friend once showed me how to change a ball joint and track rod end from then on I was on my own.

Own the day

I watched the Italian job in primary school at the end of term one year I must have being 7 or 8 at the time, from their on every time I saw one on the road I loved it. when I turned 17 I had saved up enough to get a fairly decent 84 Mayfair which is the very same I am working on at the moment.

Know exactly where you are coming from. I remember the idler gear bearing broke up on my first mini. Garage wanted a lot of cash to fix so a mate from college and i ended up fixing it. That was an epic job but we both learnt so much

My Father got me into minis when I started showing interest in XR2's and he also got me into Landrovers when I started looking at HiLux's... Seems to be a connection there LOL

Vizards book, along with Whiffin's clubman with it's HUGE 130hp (at the time) got me into turbo's...

I remember Whiffins car and also Stuart Gurrs racing at the early showdown. quick cars at the time

1972 - walked across the fields to Poddington Airfield to see what all the noise was coming from - fatal.

1978 - bought grandfathers 850 Mini off him when he stopped driving - second mistake :)

Saul Bellow - "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
Stephen Hawking - "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Collecting toy cars as a kid got me in to cars, it has grown in to real ones now 😂.

What got me in to minis was watching them racing I'm various series at mallory/ Donington, they looked so fun with all the lift off oversteer from the mighty minis. Glad I managed to get in to minis because there they only car I've decided to keep and finish.

Dad used to deal cars briefly when I was very young and was then also a long distance lorry driver so I was playing with spanners (literally) from before I can remember.

Always loved cars and had more dinky toys than you could shake a stick at.

When I got a bit older my cousins were into mini's which is where I got that bug from.

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing half of.

Ever since I was little there have always been minis around me, when i was young my mom had a vermilion red 998 clubman, and I loved it! So pretty much as far as I can remember I've always wanted a mini and I'm quite lucky to have had my dream car as my first car, I miss it being on the road though, but highly looking forward to the day it is again!

Mine was this little thing I used to play with when I was small - my mother always likes to remind me that when we went shopping she would always find me under the clothes rails making brrrmm, brrrmm noises

Edited by ntm1275 on 31st Mar, 2014.

When me and my bro were little kids i was into beetles (all toys, watching herbie and getting volksworld) and he was into minis (all toys, italian job, mr bean and getting miniworld) but with my bro being 6 years older when he turned 16 and him n my dad went out to find a suitable mini.. it was late 90's and they were all sitting in peoples gardens and pretty much every knock on the door got a "yeah take it away!... or yeah £50?" So my dad being my dad cleared the whole town of them and the back garden was FULL of them!!! Me being a 9 year old with loads of minis being my playground and beetles being way more expensive than minis back then... beetles were history and it was all mini for me from then on!!!!

i needed a cheap first car to impress my girlfriends dad..... so it was a ford ka or a mini. bought the mini drove it 20000km a year for 6 years... the more i drove it the more i loved it... now so many years later i still have it along with 3 others.

ps her dady was not impressed at all but she was...

you can do anything if you set your mind to it...
i rather blow it up winning than keep it together losing.

finish date set for project 1... march 2018

My family had all pretty much had Mini's at some point in their life, so I'd grown up with Aunties and Uncles driving them and always liked them. However my first proper experience of a Mini (that I remember) was when I was about 10 or 11 and my Mum had just passed her test, and my Dad bought her an old 850. It was possibly the worst piece of junk in history, nothing worked, it was falling apart, and always broke down, yet it had such character that you couldn't help but love it.

From then on I knew I would always end up with Mini's in the blood, but didn't manage to pick up my first one until I was 21.