Sommaire pour August 2025 de MiniWorld

Pretty powerful cover, huh? Made sense to do it that way, as it’s a pretty powerful car – not just in terms of outright horses, but also visual impact, cultural currency and, most importantly of all, on-track prowess. The story of Graham Brewis’s Mini has so many engaging angles, from the super-rare engine to the length of ownership, the quality of the restoration, and quite simply the fact that it’s survived after being roasted in the smoky crucible of motorsport for so long. …and it’s not the only Mini that’s coming out swinging in this month’s MiniWorld. Flip to p.52 and you’ll find a pair of hardcore pickups built by a legend in the scene, Nick Paddy. If you’ve been around Minis for a while, you may remember the iconic…

MINI SPORT 4-POT ALLOY CALIPERS These precision machined alloy 4-pot vented calipers suit the 7.9” special vented brake discs by Mini Sport. The 7.9” brakes have been specially developed to allow the fitment of 10” wheels, which allows a larger brake pad to be fitted while keeping the original look and handling characteristics of the early Minis. Each caliper is created on the very latest CNC machining centre, from aircraft grade aluminium billets. The finished machined parts are carefully inspected before being anodised to one of the seven colours Mini Sport can offer. Finally each part is inspected again for quality control before being hand built by their expert technicians. These are a direct bolt-on replacement for the original calipers and specially designed for single brake line fitment, and they…

Following the beaten track is OK. No-one will judge you for taking the safe route in life – after all, that’s how the species advances, right? By looking after itself? But there will always be mavericks. There have to be. If you’re traversing a clearly defined woodland path, sensibly following the blazes painted on the trees to show you the way, it’s worth considering the person who painted them there in the first place. That forest didn’t grow to accommodate mankind, we had to force our way through. Once upon a time, somebody stepped away from the path and delved into the undergrowth, keen to see where the adventure took them, to go where nobody had been before. In the case the appropriately named Super Cooper you see spread across these…

This is an original UK-supplied 1965 Morris Mini Cooper S that was exported to America at some point in the 1970s. While there it was customised with the shell being de-seamed and painted bright orange! Fast-forward several decades and with original Cooper S Minis being more desirable than a ’70s custom, the car was shipped back to the UK for restoration. Once inspected, the cost to return the car back to standard was beyond the scope and cost of the initial buyer and so an unfinished project was purchased by Martyn Armstrong with the sole intention of turning the car into a fully-fledged Appendix K racer. Following 35 years away from racing, Martyn decided it was a good time to get back on track and over a two-year period during…

Chameleons are peculiar creatures. They have zygodactylous feet (which means the toes are configured like the pistons in a flat-four engine) which give them tenacious grip, they have rapidly extrudable tongues for ensnaring passing insects with astounding sneakiness, they have prehensile tails that allow them to swing from branches like monkeys, and their eyes can move independently of one another so that they can simultaneously keep an eye on predators while identifying an escape route. They’re basically the lizard equivalent of Jason Bourne. They can do everything, and do it all at the same time. Their most notable feature, of course, is their ability to adapt to any given surroundings with ease. They have a membrane of crystals and pigments underneath a superficial skin layer that allow them to mimic the…

Back in April 1969, having sold an 850 Mini some months earlier (387 AYL – my first Mini, bought when I was 16 years old) and not really taking to using public transport, I noticed a Mini Cooper parked alongside Clark Bros. in Welling, Kent. With a centre roof aerial and SEV Marchal headlamps, it looked the part, Radford-ish even. It also turned out to be ‘Taurus Tuned’ with twin HS4 carbs. The only drawback, it kept falling out of third gear – but at £165 it was a must-have. No more buses! Within a couple of weeks the Mini was booked in at a local workshop to have a Gold Seal replacement gearbox fitted. Now driving properly, the Cooper experience had bitten and I fancied trying some competition, so…

Just eight miles from Belfast, the annual Minis in the City can be found within Wallace Park – a recreation ground presented to Lisburn from its then landlord back in 1884. Unaware Sunday dog walkers find themselves viewing a history lesson of Minis with a category-based show just shy of 200 cars, displayed by enthusiastic owners ready to share their project of passion. Everything from the straight-fromthe-factory low-mileage example to a race-spec car with Peugeot engine was among the variety, and it is those two extremes of both lack of and plentiful modifications that interest onlookers and fellow owners the most. Organised by Minis in Northern Ireland, the club gathers monthly with shows, runs, treasure hunts, classic trials and quizzes among the activities from the group that started out in…

Following on from VolksWorld mag’s successful Run to The Sun, MiniWorld set up a Mini cruise in 1995, from Reading services to Trevelgue Holiday Park, near Newquay in Cornwall. The Riviera Run became very popular and got bigger and better every year, even attracting some incredible Mini builds created especially for the show-and-shine. Expertly organised by Cornish Mini Club, the event moved to the stunning seaside location of Pentewan Sands Holiday Park in 2017. The brilliant location has lovely holiday homes, and great camping facilities if you prefer to pitch a tent. There are a number of restaurants, shop, pool and other attractions ideal for a fab family getaway. The seafront location is a perfect backdrop to the showground, just behind the sand dunes. This year CMC celebrated the Riv…

One of the first things any Mini owner or potential owner should do is to buy a workshop manual for the year and mark of their Mini. I say this because doing so will help with understanding how a Mini is put together – and perhaps more importantly how it goes back together one it has been taken apart! There are a lot of Mini sites online and on social media and a lot of new owners are querying parts and problems, where looking in a manual would have quickly answered the question. I say this purely as advice, not as criticism; it’s always far better to ask than to get things wrong, with possible safety or reliability issues. You can never know too much about your Mini even if…

Safe and reliable running is important for so many reasons - longevity, economy, saving money in the long run, and of course - most importantly of all - ensuring that you reach your destination! Whether it is a non-start situation, preparing for a rolling road session or a road trip, it’s always a good time for a DIY engine health check and tune. Using just a few inexpensive tools, we look at what’s involved in keeping your Mini’s A-Series engine happy, dependable and ready to enjoy Driving a Mini when the engine is well set up and running at its best is a very satisfying experience, and it significantly enhances ownership enjoyment. Keeping the engine and the rest of the car well serviced is the first step towards achieving this,…

Feelgood vibes are pretty much guaranteed at any Retro Rides event, and that was very much the case at this year’s Weekender. For the uninitiated, this is a two-day show that happens every spring at the Goodwood Motor Circuit; it’s been growing in stature over the last decade, and it’s blossomed into something that should absolutely be on your calendar. It’s not a dedicated Mini show of course, but as you can see from the photos here, there’s always an extremely strong showing of Minis of all shapes and flavours. And that was truer than ever this year, as one of the themed displays was ‘Honey, I shrunk the car’, open to interesting cars under 3.5m in length – diminutive fare included things like the Autozam AZ-1 and Fiat 500,…

Life has a habit of surprising us with unexpected occurrences. Sometimes they’re welcome, sometimes very much not. To illustrate the point: back in 1873, the western United States of America experienced something unprecedented and terrifying – the arrival of the Rocky Mountain locust. Or, more specifically, rather a lot of Rocky Mountain locusts. The swarms were improbably massive – as they flew overhead, they blotted out the sun. And their effect was devastating; they stripped crop fields clean, gnawed through wooden buildings and devoured laundry from washing lines. It was an event as close to the apocalypse as anyone had ever experienced; one swarm was estimated to be 1800 miles long and over a hundred miles wide, taking almost a week to pass. Just have a think about that for…

Some time ago I fitted a Stage 1 kit to my 998cc Mini. It has livened up the performance quite a bit and has made the engine sound a lot better from the outside – so much so that a lot of people seem to think that the engine is highly tuned. The downside though is that the induction noise from the cone filter is very loud and raucous sounding inside the car particularly when the engine is under acceleration or a higher speed is being maintained. I am noticing it more too because I am taking the Mini on a few longer runs and am thinking of a longer road trip later in the year. I wonder if you can advise me on the best way to improve this.…

Nick Paddy, of PlayMini, is well known for his love of Mini Pickups. Many long-term MiniWorld readers will be aware of the blue Pickup he owned and built in the 1990s with a KAD 16-valve engine. Its legend lives on; “I could never afford it but I’d love to reproduce that 16-valve Pickup,” says Nick. Nowadays, however, he likes all his Minis to look more 1960s in style. Oh, and they also have to be grey. During the first Covid-19 lockdown, Nick and wife Nicola built a grey Mini Van together. “Then I thought that I wouldn’t mind doing a Pickup and Nicola fancied doing one too, and obviously she knows that I like Pickups. So, we sold the Mini Van on a car auction website and then I found…

Well, the weather couldn’t have been more different for the second round of the Mighty Minis racing season. After a cold and wet Donington, Silverstone National was warm and sunny. Eighteen cars would be competing on the iconic Silverstone circuit. Qualifying commenced at 10.30 and it was immediately obvious that Greg Jenkins, attending his first race of the season, would be pushing Olly Samways for pole position. His time of 1:15.715 was just 0.006 seconds ahead of Olly when the chequered flag fell. Ahmed Sharabani, also in his first race, came home third. Car 32 finished a little disappointingly in ninth and dad in car 64 was 14th. Race 1 would commence at 14.50. Fifteen minutes or so before our race we all proceeded to the assembly area behind the…

Hello! I’m Tom, otherwise known as ‘TheMiniBuildGarage’ over on TikTok. For the past few months I’ve been documenting my Mini build, or should I say ‘lack of’ my Mini build. You see… what’s the best way of putting this? I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. I’m a graphic designer for a living, and I purchased my first ever restoration project in the form of a 35th Anniversary classic Mini (you know, the ones that look like the interior is from a 1990s bus) back in November last year. Knowing full well it was going to be, let’s say, a steep learning curve? For example, only last week I realised that I threw away a load of perfectly good washers because I thought they were snapped clean in half……