We we're amazed at this response, we didn’t expect it and couldn’t understand it. A week on after thinking hard and considering all points of views, we think telling the complete story is the right thing to do as we know now most enthusiasts will want to hear it.
We'd like to say sorry to the people who didn’t want all the information made public, we respect you and understand your concerns but hope even though you don’t agree with our decision, you understand that we listened to you but took opinions of others as well into consideration when making our decision.
Myself and fellow Mini enthusiast Martin Price recently sold some parts to a chap called Paul who claimed he had an ex-works S in one of his farm out buildings that he's owned for over thirty years and is still sat unrestored as he bought it along side an unrestored 1071 S and a one off 1930's four wheel drive Brooklands race car once owned by John Pertwee. Even though the chap seemed decent and plausible we obviously dismissed the idea of an ex-works car sitting un-discovered just down the road from us because Martin and I have been interested in Mini's for getting on for 30 years each so surely we'd have known about it! We tried to put it out of our minds but about three months after selling the parts we came across Paul's phone number and agreed that we should give him a ring and try to call round and take a look what he'd got.
We made the call and arranged to meet at Paul’s farm and just in case he had something interesting, we asked a local chap called Dave Beswick to come along as he's got a vast knowledge of ex-works cars and we knew if this car was anything he'd probably recognise it. Dave explained to us on the way the first things he'd be looking for was the asbestos heat shield on the bulkhead and the hydrolastic pipes running inside the car through neat grommets in the bulkhead and down the inner wheel arches with inline coupling/restrictors fitted. We knew the car was bought by Paul with a 970S engine but this was out the car so the pipes/heat shield should be clearly visible.
When we arrived at the farm Paul took us to the building where the cars were. What we were greeted with was a rough old red Mini with a white roof, right colours but not an obvious ex-works car, this was until we opened the bonnet and pulled the carpet back inside to expose the hydro pipes. Dave couldn’t believe what he were looking at.
After being the biggest cynic out of any of us he was quite sure we were looking at an Abingdon built ex-works car.
30yrs ago when Paul bought the car he was told it was GRX55D which had been purchased by Jonny Organ (known comps dept mechanic) from Abingdon or at least one of its incarnations and as we looked at it sat on its bump stops looking sad the story stacked up in our minds as it had obvious damage on the nearside front corner which was documented on the 1966 Monte and everything looked right. We wondered if after GRX55D was damaged Abingdon decided to re-shell the car or build a completely new car for the GRX55D identity to enter the Circuit of Ireland?
Needless to say we took lots of pictures and that evening emailed them straight off to Guy Smith and Robert Young. The next morning we spoke to both of them who had been discussing our find until late that evening and they were both 99% sure we were looking at an ex-works S. What we had to determine next was which car we had found. We all understood that if we could work out which car it was there was a good chance the car would already exist as most works car had more than one shell so having a couple of cars both claiming the same identity happens. Robert explained to us it would probably be easier to prove the car wasn’t GRX55D than to prove it was, in fact the chances were we would never find out what number plate our car competed on. The best hope we'd got of positively identifying the car was if it still had the body number plate intact on the front panel which was always going to pretty unlikely as we believed Pauls car had 10 years rallying in private hands after its works life. Robert explained to us the body numbers were recorded by Abingdon when they registered a new car so unless it was the first shell of a known works car it would be meaningless as its number would have never been recorded.
As you can imagine after getting the news off Guy and Robert we were eager to get back over and look at the car in more detail so last Thursday evening we went back with a proper camera a torch and some emery cloth to clean any parts up that looked like they might hold clue's to the cars past identity. Obviously the first thing we looked for was the body number and to our amazement there it was sat in between a 6RA relay and a rough old bracket exactly where it should have been with a few layers of paint over it. With the emery cloth and a wire brush it wasn’t hard to reveal the numbers which we forwarded straight on the Guy Smith. Guy hadn’t got the list of body numbers which is held by British Motor Heritage at Gaydon so he called Robert. Robert hadn’t got access to the list either so he called Bill Price who straight away told Robert that the car wasn't the first body shell of GRX55D but was in fact the first shell of GRX309D.
This news came as a shock to us as only a couple of days before we first viewed the car we happened to be looking at the history of GRX309D. We understand that this find is not going to make the current people who are arguing about who's got the genuine GRX309D very happy. It’s well documented that Abingdon sent a race car to the State's to compete in the Sebring 3 hour race. We think perhaps Abingdon built a brand new car for this prestigious event as they wouldn't have wanted to enter a rally car that had done four major events into a circuit race. As far as we can work out this genuine Abingdon ex-works car still survives in the States as a race car. Then we have the uk car that is registered with the number GRX309D. We have researched what we can about this car and found its authenticity has come in for some criticism over the years but we can't comment on how much of it has ever seen Abingdon but one thing is for sure, whatever it is it’s a thing of beauty and we'd love to own it.
We're going to meet up with Paul later this week and discuss our findings in detail with him and give him our ideas of what we think he should do with the car now. We'd like to see it sympathetically restored as group1 car, perhaps as Paddy drove it in the 66 Rally of the Flowers. This would set it apart from the other UK car which is presented as a group2 car. We see this find as another piece of the GRX309D jigsaw and no doubt with finding this piece it’s going to make it easier to find other pieces that will help in trying to string together its history. We'd like to discover how many events Pauls car did before it was retired into the "Abingdon compound" so any thoughts or opinions people have would be appreciated.
Thanks to Guy Smith, Robert Young and Bill Price for their help in identifying this car. Any more information we unearth we'll post it here but for now enjoy the pictures.
Here are few pictures, the rest can be viewed via a link to Martin's photobucket account.
There's also a link to a couple of video's on YouTube of when we exposed the number on the body I/D plate, if you watch these please bear in mind that we were thinking we'd found GRX55D and there’s an argument to say we were a bit over excited!!!!
Full Image Gallery
VIDEO: mazda and Works S 011
VIDEO: mazda and Works S 012
Regards Dave.
So as you have found yourself, they do turn up ! 
, and there'll be no winners or losers I suspect, great find though 
