There is no question of not going back: The Mini Chronicles Grand Finale

                 When I was living in London, I had the goofy idea that the ideal urban automobile would be a balls out, no prisoners, no back seat  Mini Cooper Rally Racer. Scary fast, nip through slivers of space, park anywhere.  

Perfect for London

             My little monster racer, Bogus (a bogus replica of a real race car) was great until I had to sell it.  Had to. I was leaving London to live in San Francisco.  In twelve hours.  We pick up the story where we left off yesterday.



             UPS show up shortly after I catch my breath and the guys from C&CC (The Britsh Hot Rod Magazine) arrive a half  hour later.  The tech expert on Minis says yeah that bolt is a bitch to get at, you really have to take the head off.  Although if they have buggered it up the engine ought to come out.  But what the hell, we've come all this way.  Lets go see it anyway, they say.

    So we head back to the fruiter where I left it, a jug of gasoline sloshing in my lap.   The fruiter says the bobbies came by twice but he managed to get rid of them. 

 
      To the amazement of the C&CC guys and myself Bogus starts.  And it’s so excited I’ve come back for it, it ups its idle to 90 MPH.   I can't believe my luck.  It runs.  You better follow us, they say.

    On the way back, just to be sure, I stop at the petrol station and while I am putting a extra couple of gallons in the tank I realize that in my confusion and anxiety I left my briefcase with my passport and my plane tickets to California on the pavement next to the fruiterer's stand.  

    By this time my hatred for the little fuck is pure, white, incandescent.  Nothing to do with the lost briefcase.  A miracle might happen and it might still be there.  My hatred is for the delicacy with which the little fuck has to be driven lest it's motor tear loose of its moorings while it is screaming at 6,000 rpms and we charge off into a herd of oncoming traffic.
 

      My hatred is that Bogus has chosen this day to go berserk.  It knows that I am trying God Help Me to sell it and it has its teeth in my neck and its claws in my back, and these guys are not going to want the little monster. It is broken and I am going to have to find someplace to store it and spend thousands to fly back from California in a couple of months when it will still be broken and unsold and I will re-live this day.  I have the feeling that Bogus is on the verge of doing something really surprising like exploding.  

    There is no question of not going back.   I have to go back just on the off chance that my case with my tickets and passport is still there.  I hope Fryatt was paying attention because there are a lot of turns and I don’t see  their car anywhere.  Hope they are not lost.     
            
    Roar, screech.  Amazingly the briefcase is still there.  

   And when I scream helplessly back to my house, I engine screaming at a steady 6,000 rpm, the C&CC guys are there.  AND FRYATT STILL WANTS THE CAR.  Although, naturally, you understand, since the engine has to come out they'll take it for four grand not four five.  These men are my brothers.  I love them.  Although only on the condition that I do not ever see the car ever again.  That they tow it away.   And they did.   

Footnote.  I talked to Fryatt a while back and he said Bogus had a good life with a new and more powerful engine and was on the cover & several articles until it was kidnapped and bludgeoned to death, its parts sold on the black market.  But now there is a Bogus 2 alive and well and living in London.  

Bogus 2 under construction

      It might even be for sale for the right price.  If you buy it, don’t, don’t, don’t ever try to sell it.

"We give up." The Mini Chronicles part 2

              So I had this Mini called Bogus in London, a full race rally replica with a $10,000

If God wanted Minis to go this fast they'd have bigger wheels.

racing engine that you could drive to the supermarket  if you had Mike Tyson's thigh for the clutch and a childish delight in embarrassing Porsches.  And I had to sell it, had to because I was leaving for California forever in two days, no place to park it, leaving forever, etc. etc.  

Nigel Fryatt look-alike

But it was OK, Nigel Fryatt and his guys at C&CC were buying it so it was gonna be all OK.
             
          Except, at one AM Friday morning, the day they were coming by to look at it get the papers, give me a check and take it away, THAT VERY DAY at 1 AM there was a clank as I was sliding sideways around Hyde Park Corner.  

Hyde Park Corner

       One of those small, awful and expensive noises you feel as much as hear.  At the next light, the whole car wobbled at idle.  I thought it was probably an engine mount and took it a Big Time Mini mechanic at 8 AM.  Call us in a couple of hours, they said. 

    Don't wait for my OK to fix it, I said, It has to be fixed.  No matter what.  Going to California.  Gotta sell it today.  Absolutely.

    At ten they said that it wasn't an engine mount, it was the engine stabilliser bolt sheared off in the block.  They were working on it.  At eleven they said they had gone down the street for some more drill bits. At noon they said they had a flame on it.  And at two thirty they said, "We give up." 

    But that was still plenty of time to take a minicab over to get the little fuck back to my house in Hampstead by 3:30 where I could hope the Fryatt & the Cars & Car Coversions guys would still want it. 

    Plenty of time.  Being Friday the minicab drove straight into a traffic jam.    But I really know the route and I steered him through the back streets and into a worse jam.

                  
      A half hour crawled by.

    I ran the last 150 yards.  The mechanic said he was really sorry they couldn't do anything.  No charge.  I gave him a twenty for the gents who had spent the morning bent over it and drove away very, very carefully, the engine rocking violently at the slightest twitch on the accelerator.  No petrol, the gauge said.  But it always says that.

      Besides I don't have time to stop for petrol, I have to stop by Ian & Tiba's house because naturally I forgot ALL of the little fuck's papers and documents like the letter from Paddy Hopkirk. 

      So I charge in their house, almost mash the cat into a pattern on the carpet, fling the contents of two suitcases into the air, until there on the bottom is the blue folder with the papers and I run out.  Nineteen minutes.  Plenty of time.  Slow ease off.  Into second gently, smoothly.  Over the past few months it has developed a habit of ripping its exhaust system off its mounts and dragging it on the ground and I think I've got that little quirk licked but you never know.  Third gear.  I am driving like the car is full of baby girls holding jars of wired Semtex.

    Seventeen minutes to go and easing gently onto York Way, I'll skip the BP petrol station because it is on the wrong side of the road and getting across the traffic twice could add another minute maybe two.  Plus a pit stop would take five minutes, so don't even think about it.  When the throttle return spring snaps with a wee ping as we pause in the traffic and the engine soars free like it loves to do.  It now idles at 75 MPH.   Roar, scream, sweat, crawl. 

              It crosses my mind, as every time I have to stop the engine screams and another half pint of petrol is transformed into partially burnt hydrocarbons, fuel economy never having been one of its strong points, it crosses my mind that having passed the BP station there's an EXXON a mile up the road, and maybe I should consider risking a stop when I get there.  (to be continued with anquish and anxiety)

"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)