The theme of this event is cute cars that are used for everyday driving
The theme of the event “GFGS CARLIFE IN YAHIKO Vol.1” held on June 9, 2024, in Yahiko-mura, Niigata Prefecture was “cute cars made in the 1980s to 2010s that are used for everyday practical purposes”. This time, we will introduce an owner who has been using a classic and cute hobby car, the Rover “Mini” for 26 years. Why didn’t he go for high performance and high grades when he fully restored it?
The Rover Mini 1000 with just the right amount of “apology
They say that “fishing begins and ends with the crucian carp,” and in the world of cars, the BMC (British Motor Corporation) “Mini” could be described as such. Although nearly a quarter of a century has passed since production was discontinued and the used car market price is on the rise, there are still many imported historic cars, and the prices are still very realistic. They are easy to get to grips with but are still very deep.
Becoming a Mini owner means living with the historical icon that established the modern compact car format of “a compact two-box front-wheel drive car with the engine mounted transversely in the front.
As you know, there are many variations of the Mini, which debuted in 1959 and went through a long period of production without a single full model change until it was discontinued in 2000. The high-performance versions of the Cooper and Cooper S, which were very successful in touring car races and rallies in the 1960s, left a particularly strong impression, and their names have become widely known even among the generation that did not know of their successes in real-time.
Because the Mini is full of the fun of modifying it to one’s liking with a wide variety of parts, there are not a few owners who have their basic grade cars modified to the specifications of the higher grade Cooper models. This Mini we saw at the event was a car clad in a “wabi-sabi” feeling, which is different from such high-performance and high-end Cooper models.
This Mini was the first car I bought after becoming a working adult
“I had always admired Mini cars I had seen in magazines since I was in junior high school,”
Hiroki Takahashi, the owner of the Mini 1000, says, “I’ve had a yearning for a Mini since I was in junior high school.
“When I became a member of society, I started to think about the Mini 1000.
“I bought this car for the first time when I started working. I got it in 1998, so I’ve been driving it for 26 years now.
The British auto industry has undergone a complex series of mergers and acquisitions since the prewar years, but as of 1989, the name of the company that produced the Mini was the Rover Group. The 1-liter engine was still in the lineup until that year.
“About three years after I got it, the gasket came loose. I was busy at the time and didn’t have a lot of time for the car, but I didn’t want to let it go, so I evacuated it to my grandmother’s house and had it sleep there for the next two years.”
translated by DeepL
