spoon.450 wrote:Yes, words fail us, and £116,000 is a ridiculous amount for an accumulation?? of poor parts thrown together, but JMO 969D has a continuous history. Not a 20 year gap between 1969 and 1989...... viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13701&hilit=jmo+works
I disagree, given the madness (at least to our eyes) in the classic car market at present, I for one am not at all surprised at the price.
I also think it is a little unfair to dismiss it as an accumulation of poor parts thrown together; granted it is not the most original but JMO is almost certainly the most rallied ex works car of them all. Four seasons on gruelling Motoring News events, generally finishing in the top ten would trash any car. I think some rose tinted spectacles need to be removed, JMO was a tool for a job and used accordingly, not cossetted in a museum or garage. These events were not a Saturday evening tour around the lanes, they were a hard, full on, flat out thrash - all night long. After the rallying finished it was robbed of many bits by Dave Gilbert, its a wonder anything was left at all to export - in 1978.
So are we saying Dave Gilbert sold the car to Switzerland Simon ?, according to "Memory Lanes" it was reshelled at some point (maybe into a surf blue car ?) the only bit of the jigsaw missing is the Clubman fronted hillclimb pic !, or was that a different car with the plates added for effect !
Steve "Murph"
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1960 Morris Mini-Minor 1380 KEC112
1976 Mini 1275 GT 1293 NVM265P
Looking at the photo of JMO with the Clubman front on it, the car clearly had exterior door hinges and so possibly the Clubman front was a fibreglass flip type for ease of access and lightness? But I could be wrong though! I agree with what Simon say's about the car - it is the descendant of the original but having suffered a very brutal life early on when the cars weren't valued and, sadly, it has somewhat been neglected right up until it was sold on Tuesday night. Hopefully though, the new owner will have it restored to as close to one of its build sheets as they can, but that, of course, remains to be seen. At least we have all seen the 'before' photos of the car and I am glad that I also got to inspect the car in some detail in the 'metal' too. Let's hope we will all see it again at a future show restored or however you might want to describe its rebirth since, in my personal opinion, given it does appear to have a continuous provenance, it deserves to be restored properly this time being a significant, if not an entirely successful, part of our great motor sporting history.
skorwxe wrote:...in my personal opinion, given it does appear to have a continuous provenance, it deserves to be restored properly this time being a significant, if not an entirely successful, part of our great motor sporting history.
While the car number plate has a continuous history I don't see how the car sold can ever wear the JMO registration. The Chassis number quoted earlier does not in anyway reflect that registration. It is not even for a Cooper car being for a standard Morris. There is a possibility that the damaged remains of JMO were built into the car but there is also the possibility that the works parts have ended up elsewhere and this is just another mini which is painted red and white with some period and some not so period rally bits on it. Whether that is worth 116 grand is up to the purchaser I guess. For me nothing I have seen on the car pictures posted would convince me it it deserves to be called a works car and the chassis number would also be a big part in that.
The situation with GRX is completely different because that body (by its number ) HAS been through the works preparation and entry so is fully deserving of the works car title. Whether the original number plate and chassis number would ever get back to it is another long matter for debate.
I see in the latest 'Cooperworld' that the car may not have sold for that (very high) price as it hadn't met its reserve , personally I think if I'd been offered that amount of money for this car there wouldn't have been a lot of chance of it being turned down !
mk1coopers wrote:I see in the latest 'Cooperworld' that the car may not have sold for that (very high) price as it hadn't met its reserve , personally I think if I'd been offered that amount of money for this car there wouldn't have been a lot of chance of it being turned down !
I heard a rumour that the actual bidding for JMO stopped way short of that 'Sold' figure at around £70k. All I can think of is that perhaps someone was then guilty of 'pulling bids off the wall' to get the price up, when that failed, the car was left with an artificial sold price which didn't obviously materialise. Nasty places auctions!
Take away the tenuous connection to a previous incarnation of a works rally car in a previous life in Narnia that red and white car looked like a £15K purchase to my eyes (absolute tops!) and that'd have to come with an S logbook! With a JMO logbook? You'd still be looking at five to ten years to build it from scratch, it'd be a replica anyway to many people and would cost what? £70K to build properly? It's like the Dead Parrot sketch with some of these cars sometimes, some people will just not accept that poor old Polly is long ago deceased!
This is why I like a good replica like Steve's ORX or DJB 93B (though to be fair to my knowledge nobody's ever referred to it specifically as thus). Steve's 'ORX' is a straight forward honest car with the sole intention of replicating in detail a particular works Mini on a particular event for a particular reason. No bullshit stories attached, no skeletons in the closet and it even started life as an actual original genuine unmolested Tartan Red/Black Mk2 S. What's not to like? When Mike Wood sat in it he said it was amazingly realistic, right down to the smell! Whizzo was knocked out by it when he took me for a spin around Chumly estate in it for a press day. We all love the cars, we don't all love the bullcrap. If people just built good honest replicas, not just talking red and white cars here, and stopped trying to pass replicas off that arrived through the letterbox in an envelope as the distant cousin of some once famous car, three or four times removed, they wouldn't attract so many raised eyebrows.
however, The plot thickens. I looked again this morning on the Coy's site, the Mini, lot 332, has been removed from their "sales" list. Must be some dispute going on. The lots are now 331, 332A, 333.
However, if you look at their e-catalogue, there it is, large as life. The e-catalogue shows all cars offered, from which you can see a lot failed to sell. However, the Mini is an exception in that it had a hammer price published yesterday but not today.
rumour has it that it didn't actually reach it's reserve price...so it's gone back to it's hole somewhere until perhaps someone offers a silly price for it.
Mini Cooper S 1964 Mk1 - International Rally winner red & white
Mini Cooper S 1964 Mk1 - Road Rally champion green & white
Mini Cooper S 1971 Mk3 - original and unrestored
Is this the start of another Works car debate ??? How much of that car is original, perhaps nothing other than it's ( semi ) continuous history.....but that's probably more than some which are accepted as " Works cars ".....opinions anyone ????? Sorry Mark
Mini Cooper S 1964 Mk1 - International Rally winner red & white
Mini Cooper S 1964 Mk1 - Road Rally champion green & white
Mini Cooper S 1971 Mk3 - original and unrestored
Surfblue 63 on Dave tonight we have how to build a Works Mini Cooper'S
Mini Cooper S 1964 Mk1 - International Rally winner red & white
Mini Cooper S 1964 Mk1 - Road Rally champion green & white
Mini Cooper S 1971 Mk3 - original and unrestored
, personally I think if I'd been offered that amount of money for this car there wouldn't have been a lot of chance of it being turned down !
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