I've decided to start a thread for my latest acquisition and pride and joy after its story recently became a bit more interesting. I found the car on a used car website early last year. It was based in Pretoria, South Africa so I promptly got a family member with a list of things to check to go see it. It all checked out and a week later I was driving it the 1500km back to Cape Town with a stop over in the middle. It went without missing a beat apart from a small problem with fuel taking forever to drain from the RH tank to the LH one. As part of checking its originality, I got in touch with the historian of MOCSA (Mini Owners Club of South Africa) who has been compiling a register of SA assembled Coopers. To my surprise he had a telephone number of a previous owner of the car. After contemplating for a few months how unlikely it would be that an ex-ex owner would still live at the same number after all the years, I took a chance. I managed to get through to the original owner's sister in law, who also owned the car for a few years after selling it on. She apparently decided to sell it on because it was "too potent" for her 19 year old son. Turns out this car was in one family from 1967 to 2008. After finding out that the original owner had passed on, I got in touch with his widow and visited her the over the weekend. They had lots of stories of long trips, breakdowns, kids learning to drive in it, birds nesting in it while it was out of service because of a window accidentally left open, towing a fold up caravan in heavy cross winds etc
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
. The original owner, an electrical engineer, also played in a number of bands and used to stuff the car full of band equipment, with guitars sticking out the rear side windows etc. Evidence of his electrical engineering skills are still present on the car today. A little switch that used to light up the boot presumably, a battery cut out in the main cable located in the driver's footwell, a small key operated switch on the front valance for an unknown reason and (in the first pic below) another switch of the same kind next to the LH rear light that operated a fuel cut off switch in the boot. The front parcel shelf also shows evidence of having had a customized dash with "lots of little instruments" (in the words of the first owner's wife). Glad my amp gauge, vac gauge and tacho are then not too out of place in this car
Probably the nicest of all stories is that the car was a wedding car for the owner and his wife in 1968.
I had read elsewhere that SA Cooper S's had a gold stripe painted just under the windows from the one A pillar all the way around the car. The wedding pic seems to give evidence of that.
Does anyone know what kind of reverse light that is? It looks like a Wipac S210. I'd be quite keen to get hold of one of those again because the hole in the rear valance is still there!
They also took a long trip through Zimbabwe in 1968, visitng the famous Zimbabwe ruins, Hwange Game Reserve and the owner's wife was kind enough to share some pictures of that as well. Enjoy!
Some of the pictures are not too crisp as I had to take pictures with a digital camera of the old B&W images.
Any ideas what those wing mirrors are?
Here she is these days, after I had the OEW rims painted in the original gold colour. The previous owner had it resprayed in the original colour and the interior redone...sadly in nothing close to the original fabric. I'll elaborate on that in another post.
![Image](http://i916.photobucket.com/albums/ad7/mockzn/austin850/IMG_3526.jpg)