You don’t realise how much synchros matter to you until you don’t have them. I lost the synchro in 2nd gear on my SW20 MR2 and it’s painful most times.
They're a blast to own and drive. I daily mine to work through town every day. It's literally the best vehicle for a city. I find parking everywhere. I can often park in absurd places because people think it's often a display to draw attention in front of coffee shops.
Walker Smithson Probably easier than parking my 88' Chevy Caprice wagon. But for having some fun on the mountain roads around where I live, the Mini certainly seems like a brilliant option for that. I've never been that big of outright speed, I prefer a responsive and sticky car. I didn't expect such steering response and lack of body roll on such an old car. Despite the fact I've heard people talking about that a billion times before, seeing is believing.
Walker Smithson Not that I actually have the money to buy it, but I was looking around on Kijiji in my general area and found this. www.kijiji.ca/v-classic-cars/kelowna/1989-morris-cooper/1168990723?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true What do you think?
The original mini is so much more than the sum of its parts. It was meant to be cheap, efficient transport for the masses. It was a master class in packaging which also led to it being fun, stylish and still hitting all its core design goals.
So glad to see you driving the same car that I own Mr Regular! As I'm in the UK, much of your reviews are of cars that aren't in our domestic market, but to see a Mini on here is a bit surreal! Got a '73 1000 myself and adore it. Almost mint, one lady owner and 34k from new. Luckily I have the later "rod" type shifter, which is much more of a traditional H-pattern! They are so much fun to own and drive, and as you probably found, it's all about preserving momentum! Acceleration isn't great at all, but it can corner at very high speed for what it is, so the solution is, don't brake! Coming off the throttle a little early and down changing is all that's usually needed to set a Mini up for cornering! Also, just incase the owner isn't aware, that clonking when coming off the throttle is not normal, yes it is like a switch, but there shouldn't be drive-line shunt like that. It's almost certainly a broken/very worn stabiliser bar. They were fitted to Mini's after the prototypes kept warping subframes and breaking exhausts. If it's not that, either the subframe mounts are all but ruined, the inner rubber couplings on the driveshafts are dead, or the transmission has some very, very bad wear! Just a little friendly advice from a fellow Mini owner! :)
This has been my dream car for as long as I can remember! I'd rather have one of these than an E-Type or a Mustang. They have sooooo much character and there really isn't anything quite like a classic Mini :D
Great vid! Really bought back memories, I had five "classic" Minis in the late 70,s. Mine all had seat belts though! A really fun car to drive. Rebuilt the engines and gearboxes quite a few times, usually in my bedroom, thanks Mum! Mechanically they were actually quite complex. Lots of gears, seals and gaskets. Gearbox and engine ran on the same oil, i.e. the gearbox sits in what would normally be the sump! They really are quite spacious inside, as long as you dont mind your legs/arms/head being crumple zones!
It isn't too hard, I use to do it on my Volvo (not that I really had to, it was just fun to do mainly for smoother downshifts). Although it was more like toe and toe on that thing.
I own a 1963 Mini and it has everything you need because my dad refurbished it. It's a 5 seater, WITH seat belts. And it doesn't sound like that at all. Mine is silent. It's just that it hasn't been started in 6-7 years but it will start and still be silent just needs a gearbox and fuel change. He even made his own personalised wheels.
I have had 3 Mini Cooper and everyone put a smile on my face when I drove them. They are not fast but feel fast and they go around corners like gocarts, just great around town'.......every Mini has a heart
Back in the late 60s early 70s my granddad had one. I was told he painted it almost hemi orange and he would take the engine apart and put it together for fun. Always thought these were neat cars. Thank you for this video I'm definitely going to buy one in the future.
I'm 6'5" and learnt to drive in my mum's mini clubman - there's more legroom in them than many standard sized modern cars plus it's more fun driving with a huge smile on your face!
Seems You had a really good time :) Man. You should get in touch with youtuber truckerhiob. He's a polish guy living in North Carolina and he has imported pretty much THE classic polish car - fiat 126p - small polish/italian car with a 650cc engine making ~23 BHP new and with more character than many of newer/better/faster cars.
I did a review of Maluch (yes, it is Polish made but the original is Italian, called Fiat 126). Letter P in Fiat 126p title stands for Polish. You can check it out if you like, it is not funny as RC reviews but maybe it will entertain you. Oh, and it is a rear engine, rear drive car, great fun in the snow or when it's wet :)
Thank you for this; it brought floods of good memories. Is this a Mini-Cooper? It has the harder exhaust note of a Cooper, also the intake noise of its twin SU carburettors, and the remote gearshift (early Mini 850s had a long and imprecise lever, sprouting directly from the 'box). It's also got the later indicator/ horn stalk; the early Mini's horn was in the steering-wheel boss and the indicator stalk had a disconcertingly-bright flashing green light at its tip. The owner rightly spent a little time on explaining the idiosyncrasies of the gearbox, but I'm surprised he didn't mention the classic tip for all BMC 'boxes without first-gear synchro. Frequently, it was impossible to put them into first from neutral, leaving one holding up traffic at stop-lights and junctions. The cure, quickly learned by most Miniasts, was to touch the lever against second, then slip, crunch-free, into first. Bearing in mind that the 'box shared its oil with the crankcase, those first-gear crunches could put a lot of metal swarf in circulation, despite the magnetic drain-plug fitted to all Minis. It was always a shock, when doing an oil-change, to see the pillar of metal filings clinging to the inside of the plug.
Here in New Zealand, being a former Britich colony we have/had a lot of these - one was even the 'star' of an iconic 80's film named 'Goodbye Pork-pie' - a car chase caper. The classic mini prank is to get a few guys together and pick some poor owners mini up from car park and move it somewhere impossible.
This video takes me back 45 years to my first car, a /64 VW Notchback, 1500 cc with a 4 speed and dual Weber carbs. I learned to drive a standard with that car. I will never forget how to take advantage of downshifting to stop as the car had no brakes, just the handbrake on its last notch. Scary!!
Wow, heated rear windows back in 66. With no transmission synchs I'm wondering if you can float gears (it's a semi-trucker trick). Considering that's from the 60's I'm surprised theres not a bigger ash tray. Cool little car.
OK... classic Mini's handle really well, much better than any classic or fox mustang, I would like thousands of others decide it as the opposite over uncooperative
Josh Briggs I didn't mean uncooperative handling. The Mini is pretty much as far from uncooperative as it gets in that regard. I was talking more about stuff like the weird shift pattern and no synchros. My car was a VW Fox, as Raistlin Majere said. A foxbody Mustang does indeed have uncooperative handling. My car was uncooperative more because it was broken than because of old technology. I had to drive it with no clutch whatsoever on two occasions. Miss that car :P
The mini is a perfect example of a wonderful British car - designed by a half italian , half german turkish man . Here in the UK everyone over the age of 45 loves them because it was their first car . But now we drive german cars because they don't leak and the heater actually works .
but in classic German fashion, they're extremely expensive and overdesigned, so when something goes bad, das is nicht gut. At least old German stuff was big and loud and got shot down by American and British stuff, all the overpriced parts making a nice ball of fire and satisfyingly loud noise when the machine hit the ground with the force of a rhinoceros impaling a tree with its waste of oxygen Luftwaffe pilot still in his cockpit.
All the later ones had seatbelts right up to they stopped making them in the early 2000s and five and a half million of them were sold new and then they were sold off to other millions over the years and I am willing to bet there were not any more people killed in these cars than any other.
Everything about this review reminds me of driving my 61 Austin Healey Sprite. The controls are the same, the engine makes the same noises, the transmission has the same whine. I really want to drive a Mini now and see how it compares.
Those roads are waaay too straight to appreciate the real charm of a classic Mini. You need very narrow roads with hard, sharp corners... Then it is fucking MAGICAL.
@@davidrossetti1061 '79 Mini was my first car. I was young, impulsive, full of testosterone and lived in a place covered in the kind of roads the Mini was made from. I would never drive as irresponsibly as I did back then, but I did leave a Fox Body 5.0 Mustang in my mirrors back in the 90's on a particularly twisty bit of road (Vancouver Island has a lot of roads like the UK)
The interior so reminds me of my dads landrover 89 the ash tray no rpm gauge and has that almost like youre driving a straight gear transmission sound. very British like.
I live in the UK and I've got a garage down the road from me that hot rods old minis :D keeping the exterior intact but doing things like putting V8 engines in them, needless to say I'm saving up lol.
I recall vividly my first drive in one too… the steering wheel is angled like on a bus, have to reach forward to grab the top of the wheel. the pedals requires my leg to fold i develope a crank in the ankle, the gearing is so short you speed into third look down and still only doing 50, drives like a revesed go kart and you sit in tip of the engine, but fuck loved every minute of it.
Re; The ashtray being further than a comfortable arms length. People used to buy after-market switch tips that were several inches long, so they could operate the plethora of controls on that well appointed dash, from the reclined position. Ash just went on the floor.