Turbo88 wrote:Pete's honest comments ring so true and should be used as a yardstick for assessment when viewing old Minis by people my age. My opinion is less than 10% of old Minis are original. When I say old Minis, I mean 1959 to 1971Pete wrote:I'm not sure the gathering of info on famous works Minis is just about informing any potential buyer, they very rarely ever come up for sale anyway. Quite a few marques have chassis data bases on competition cars, especially single seaters and sports cars but maybe it's because they're not so easy to fabricate?? Not that faking is exclusive to famous Minis, as I'm sure we all know. I don't see anything wrong with trying to build a history timeline for the works cars but I wish 'em good luck cos it seems to be a subject alot do not want to talk about.
Certainly true to say that the originality of works Minis 50 years down the line only reflects that of say a roadgoing Mk1 S, this is true. However, I think the 'lesser' desirable (and less competed/damaged/stolen) small bore early Minis do tend to have survived in a much more original state. Having a roadcar built from 5% of it's original parts, or building one from an old logbook and a pile of collected parts does go on and always has, I think the reason the works cars come in for so much scrutinee is probably due to their high profile so when one appears from nowhere fully restored (don't they usually??) and is talked about in such glowing terms in the press, at Goodwood or by the clubs or whatever it usually begs the question..where the f*ck did that come from?? And if you've got well known experts building them by slapping logbooks on donor cars (plenty of examples) cos the original car got scrapped years ago it then all starts to look very hooky indeed, especially when an original turns up that's already been faked!!
