"How I loved the Little Car Then": The Mini Chroncicles Part 3

         
         Continuing the story of my last day in London trying to sell my full race Paddy Hopkirk rally replica Mini Cooper before moving to California:


       Waiting for the light to change to cross the Kentish Town road, where everybody is always pissed off, carving each other up at 1 mile an hour to gain that all important extra half inch, and the little Mini, which had been idling at a screaming  75 MPH coughs tragically and dies.  By the next change of lights, encouraged by the singing of horns behind me I get it to run again on two cylinders and it ventures out into the middle of the Kentish town road, coughs and dies again in the middle of one of those yellow, cross-hatch, no-go bazooka zones.

        A lot of advice from my fellow motorists at this point.  I drag it across the intersection on the starter motor, the engine flailing around loose, the bonnet flapping up and down.  Eleven minutes to go before the poor hopeful guys from CCC show up at my house and wonder where WonderMini is.  

                 I can't parallel park it, all I can do is nose it in alongside a fruiter's market cart with its blue mini butt sticking out in traffic and its blue and white mini nose on the yellow line.  How I loved the little car then.

  I give the fruiterer twenty pounds, and I ask him to look after it for me, tell him I'll be back in an hour.  He looks doubtful.  Especially when I start running. 


     No chance of a taxi on the Kentish Town road but maybe my luck is changing because by sprinting, maybe I can just catch a  bus that is pulling out of a bus stop a block away.  I catch it at the next light, pound on the door and the driver lets me in.  The bus stops and we sit in traffic.  In a bus that is wall to wall with the sound of my gasping for air.  

               Finally the bus starts to move and it accelerates all the way up to seven maybe eight miles an hour.  Stopping at stops where there is no-one there.  Slowing way down at intersections in case the light hasn't had enough time to turn red.  

                 Alright, I tell myself, I'll be late, but they are coming up from Croydon, so they'll wait right?  Then I remember the UPS pickup for the computer I'm shipping to California is due at 3:30 and they don't do Saturday pickup and if I don't make it back by 3:30 I won't have a computer in California.  Everything, all of my books will be lost. I try to practise mind control.  There is nothing I can do.  I can't run the two miles uphill.  And I can't hitch a ride.  Brits are afraid of heavily sweating Americans over six feet tall with a crazed look.  Might as well enjoy the ride.

              Then bus stops and the driver fools around for awhile fumbling for change or something.  Then he switches the engine off AND GETS OUT OF THE BUS AND SHUTS THE DOOR.  AND HE WALKS AWAY.

              I am plastered against the back window watching him as he has a nice chat with another fellow.  I bang on the glass and they glance up but figure it's just another looney.  Lots of looneys on the bus these days.  The other chap has a story to tell. 

              He tells it.  And they laugh.  Then the other chap wanders over to the bus gets in and starts it up.  Apparently he is the other bus driver and he went to the same racing-bus school as the other bus driver.  Seven miles an hour tops.  Never missed a single red light. Any slower and we'd be going backwards. 


             Every stop takes forever. I never noticed before how  people talk among themselves, pausing for effect or trying to remember the next line as they get on an off the bus. I know now, the novel I'm halfway through on my computer is going to be lost.

               Valuable seconds slide by into minutes as a gentle lady of mild confusion looks around for a hand hold and considers her strategy for negotiating the first step.  

                It seems like hours but eventually we get to South End Green and I run the last quarter mile to my house only seventeen minutes late.  

(to be continued with final episode with a special guest appearance, tomorrow)

"WHAT??" she screamed: the Mini Chronicles part 1

                     When I lived in London the original pint-sized 1960s Mini Cooper 

was the ultimate urban car.  

Paul McCartney had a Mini too. 

            You could park it anywhere and go through holes in the traffic that other cars could not see. 

             In real life, the Mini Cooper I had was pleasant, (a 1972 1275 S with all mod cons) but dull.  Nippy, but I have never been thrilled by nippy.  So I sold my real one to buy a replica of a full race Paddy Hokirk Mini.  The motor was shot so I had British Tuner, Oselli bore out the engine to the max 1375 cc, with all the other solid lifter polished and balanced Kent Cam stuff just like a real a full race rally engine. It would blow the doors off anything this side of a Ferarri but you weren't risking the national heritage by parking it in the street.

            So the little car (we called it Bogus) and I were happy for a while.  Except for the yowl of the straight cut gears in the transmission.  I was driving up to Silverstone with Pippa,l the beautiful  blonde PR exec from my publisher, Pan/Macmillan to sell some of my books at the British Grand Prix.  It was a hot July day and we were bounding along on a back road on full whack, following a big Lancia.

Lancia Fulvia (click to enlarge)

     "Look at them." I said. "They've got their windows rolled up, the air-conditioning on, the stereo is probably playing some wall to wall fabric softener.  They don't even know they're going fast."

    "What?" she screamed.

    The straight cut gears had to go.  After I had it's screaming teeth pulled it was a little sweetie around town.  It rode like a brick falling down stairs and spin it's wheels in almost any gear and it had soul and 130 hp at 7,000 rpm.  Which may not sound like much but it only weighed an ounce more than as your left shoe.

        On the downside ,the racing stripes, roll cage and no back seat, were a dead giveaway.  It looked like a case of arrested adolescent development and I couldn't get anybody to ride with me.  When I went to dinner with my friend Fay Maschler, (London's restaurant Diva in The Evening Standard,), she made me park it out of sight so nobody would know she knew the owner of the little monster.

         Still, I forgave it its foibles like ripping out it's super trick exhaust from time to time, and having to give its little black box a cuddle before it would start on a cold morning.  But they all have their little foibles don't they?      
        
        Anyway I waited too long to sell it. I needed wheels until I left for the land of fruits and nuts in a few days.   But I couldn't take it to California with me.  So I had, absolutely had to sell it.  And the first ad I put in Autosport for £6,500 brought in just  one reply who lost interest as soon as he found out it wasn’t a real Mini-Cooper.

          A little rise in anxiety here; I was moving to California in a week.  I already had more luggage than I could carry.  Besides, the California Highway Patrol would take it behind an abandoned cop house and ventilate the little car with their 357 Magnums for no crash tests, no pollution control and eating Porsches.  

         So I ran another ad in Auto Sport, dropping the price down to £4,500, showing a beauty pic and, yes, oh yes, the phone rang.  Nigel Fryatt the editor of CARS & CAR CONVERSIONS said they wanted to do a feature on it.  Put it on the cover of their new Quarterly magazine, MINI WORLD.  Buy it.  Oh JOY!!!!   (to be continued, with pain and violence)