He buzzed the Cooper flat-out in top and held the throttle on the stop into the corners! No lifting off, no slowing down, the Cooper attacked bends at full chat

Everyone should experience the delights of driving an original Mini. In this issue we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the giant-killing Mini-Cooper, one of the all-time great driver’s cars. Enthusiasts of a certain age invariably began their motoring with an Austin Seven because they were plentiful and cheap. John Haynes started his huge publishing empire when he stripped down his Austin Seven into a ‘special’ and recorded the process in a booklet that became the essential Haynes manual.
 
Many of the Baby Boomer generation fired-up their motoring in a Morris Minor if they were unlucky, or a Mini if luck was on their side. Coming along at the tail end of this bunch, I unfortunately missed out on Mini ownership.
 
Most weekends at the Coucher household were taken up with metal-bashing and optimistic mechanical work as various classic cars secreted around the property were attacked with spanners and Haynes manuals in an attempt to bring them back to life. Friends of my father would drop in for a cup of tea and to dispense advice on how to get the Bentley’s one-shot lubrication system operative or how to set the timing on the 356. Being surgeons, engineers, architects and other comfortable types, their cars reflected their means so Minis were not often seen. But one of the more risqué creative types brought a Mini-Cooper S and took my E-type-driving father for a spin around the twisting mountain roads of Table Mountain. The E-type was sold soon afterwards.
 
I managed to get rides in these chaps’ classics, ranging from rorty 911s to solid Mercedes and bouncy vintage contraptions. At the same time my father gifted me my first car: a 1953 Lancia Aurelia B20GT. Great, but there was a catch: it was a basketcase and I had to restore it. An Aurelia is one of the most complex cars ever handbuilt but, being an optimistic 16-year-old, I set about it.

This car had been owned by an engineer who crashed it the night before emigrating so father got it for a song, intending it to be a spares car for his own B20. We managed to pull out the stoved-in front end with a chain and the shape was then ‘corrected’ with lashings of body filler. I just wanted to get on and paint it bright red! Cringe. But along the way I learnt about sliding-pillar front suspension, pot joints, propshafts, rust, epoxy glue, body filler, glassfibre, acrylic paint and all that good stuff.
 
The exciting bit was getting the ‘Lowboy’, as it became known, lit up. With everything connected the engine cranked over but would not ignite. One friend suggested removing the spark plugs and, as I undid number three, a fountain of water squirted out. Ah, that engine. It should have been a lovely De Virgilio-designed 2.5-litre V6 but the previous owner had blown that up and original Aurelia engines were thin on the veldt in South Africa. So he’d fitted a Ford Essex 3.0-litre V6! Hey, a bush mechanic has to make do and the Essex promised 140bhp against the Lancia’s 118 so I was happy.

The truculent Lowboy was eventually persuaded to run and what an incredible experience it was: absolutely terrifying. The Ford 3.0-litre was too powerful but sounded glorious with its free-flow homemade exhausts. Too much welly and the clutch would start to slip. Drive around that and get your boot in, then the Weber carb would starve, resulting in embarrassing kangarooing. The original radiator would just about manage for half an hour before the needle went off the gauge. The handling on ancient, cracked Michelin X tyres was alarming and firm braking would result in really scary front suspension vibration. Corner too hard, and body-flex caused the rooflining to come down over the occupant’s eyes. It all taught me how to drive sympathetically.

The Lowboy was a deathtrap but I’d built it and I loved it. It got me to Varsity on most occasions. But one day a young racing driver, Roddy Mills, pitched up in a proper Mini-Cooper and took me for a blast. I was amazed at the tight fit of the bucket seat and experienced a racing harness for the first time. Mills hopped in and demolished my understanding of fast driving. On our favourite route he buzzed the Cooper flat-out in top gear and held the throttle on the stop into the corners! No lifting off, no slowing down, the mad Cooper just attacked the bends at full chat. I simply could not comprehend how fast that diminutive Mini went. Totally demoralised, I soon swapped the Lowboy for… an Alfasud. Not the smartest of car deals.

Robert Coucher
Robert has grown up with classic cars, having owned a Lancia Aurelia B20GT, Alfa Romeo Giulietta and a Porsche 356C. He currently uses his 1955 Jaguar XK140 as his daily driver, and is a founding editor of this magazine.