'79 mini 1000

This was my first ever car. I would have been about 13/14.

It was discovered in a barn near Dartmoor on a farm along with a Morris minor and a vanden Plas 1100 by a friend of my dad's while exploring his late father's estate.




I paid £60 for it and it was mine.
The TA in KTA577V being an Exeter registration, it turned out it had lived most of its life a few streets away from me in St Thomas, Exeter. The original reg plate was BMW 500V, which as you can imagine had been sold many years ago. Swindon reg apparently.

Getting it out of the barn was a struggle as the wheels were stuck and tyres wouldn't hold air. So we took the wheels, painted them and fitted new tyres and then came back, freed the handbrake and refitted the wheels.


Now, the muddy slope outside the barn was on a hill and wasn't wide enough to get the trailer head on, so we needed to roll the mini out of the barn, turn right downhill and onto the trailer.

I remember this next bit vividly. It was decided that dad and his mate would be outside ready to push/catch the car and I would be driving. So I got into the dog eaten drivers seat and was then pushed out of the barn. Before they'd got to the front of the car to slow it down, I'd hopped the wooden chock we'd left out, turned right and was gathering speed down the hill.
I pressed the brake, the pedal went to the floor and stayed there. No brakes. Pulled the handbrake. Nothing

Luckily for me the engine was seized and the clutch worked so I was able to put it in gear and use the clutch as a brake. I managed to stop just short of the trailer. Good parenting eh!

Anyway we got it on, the Granada managed to tow it out of the roughest farm track in Devon and we drove home, with the clutch going halfway back to Exeter. We made it though.

And then it was home. I remember immediately washing the 20 years of dust and grime off it and wondering, how the hell do I fix this?

I stripped it back to the bare shell, carefully labelling everything with the view of using it as my first car. I got as far as removing the front end, which turned out to be hiding some accident damage. It had had a front end shunt at some point in its life and new wings and front panel slapped on badly.

I ended up buying a working mini once I passed my test and the green one got pushed to the sidelines.

And that's sort of its story over the last 17 years. I'd work on it and then I'd change jobs or move house or buy another car and it would end up falling to the bottom of priorities.

Now I have my own house with my own garage and this little mini that has followed me all round the country, the thing that started off all this car nonsense is now finally going to get done