In 1972 I purchased, second hand, a 1965 Morris Mini. As I recall it had a 850 cc motor. The gear lever was different to this vehicle in that it was attached where the firewall and floor meet. Mine was the same colour as this one and the grill was the same. I did 90mph on one occasion going down a very long steep hill. It was the second car I owned. The first was a 1959 6 cylinder Ford Zephyr.
It was like something from another planet back in the day - it moved motorcycles into a new era, an awesome machine then and now and this is an amazing example . .
This car is very special and expensive, somewhere in the region of 50k. But alot if people just think they are expensive just because they are fast. WRONG.. The reason why they are so special is that in the late 80s and 90s there was a motorsport called group A and group B rally. Many car manufacturers like Ford ,Audi, Etc. Thought ' hey let's build the fastest car and then we will win the completion ' ... but the organisers said No... it has the be a road car that is already in production. But the only cars that the manufacturers had were economical 1.4 litres and the sort. So they asked " what do you mean by production car " and the organisers said " well you have to have at least 5 thousand of them already on the road ". So some clever clogs within the company came up with an idea.. " let's build a fast turbo charged car..then build 5 thousand of them..then keep about 12 for yourself for the race and flog the rest of the 4980 of them to the general public as cheap and fast as we can...then go back to the organisers and say ...,hey look we want to enter this car into the race and it is a production car because we have 5000 of them on the road" So ...in effect what people bought was not just a fast car... it was a real rally car that the manufacturers were reluctant to sell you just so they could enter the race. The car cost double or tripple to build but they just flogged them cheap just for the rules of the race. This is known as ' homologation' And these cars are homologation special cars. What you have is a real pedigree group B rally car..with indicators and reverse lights just to make it road legal. That's why it's so special. If it were not for those competition rules, nobody would ever have owned such a car with such power. And talking of such power...half of them were written off because we could not control them.. loads were stolen and used by bank robbers.. and the rest were too expensive to maintain and just rotted away. So now there are only a handful left that have been restored and kept clean and for those that knew exactly what they were buying...and kept them in bubble wrap for 40 years. Those collectable jems are silly money like 150k plus.. So now you know.. And of course the daddy was the YB 2 litre dual overhead cam 16 valve turbo by Cosworth which went on the win race after race. And if you really know your cosworth engines then... the one that has a stamp on the side of the actual block itself that says "200" not '205' ...is better because it came in the 4wd cosworths...it had thickened walls and deep cylinders so it was highly tuneable..700 ..800..900 bhp...
