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Hi All , just restoring a red Mk 1 Cooper. NWP88E. Does anybody remember this car or happen to know the last owners. It seems to have spent a fair amount of time in Scotland and Warwickshire. Latterly Essex. I googled the registration and was surprised to find a nice colour photo of it taken in 1994 in Scotland The car looked to be in a much healthier state then than now...

Any info gratefully received.
Cheers. Mark

I can't help you with the last owners but I can give you a bit of history on this, around 1970 it belonged to a guy called Dave Nicholls who worked for Land Oak Motors in Kidderminster. I think he was the second owner.

Incredible. Might I ask if you can PM me any more info or put me in touch perhaps?? It was registered in Kidds according to heritage. Cheers.Mark

PM sent

I think a friend of mine owned this car about 3 or 4 years ago, it had been stored in a farmyard in North Yorkshire, having come down from Aberdeen I think. Does it have a right hand tank hole, a rotten roof, no interior, and half a front caliper by any chance?

The very same. Looked like it had been stored in less than optimal conditions. Lol. Funnily enough it was sat in a farm in essex. Weirdly it had picked up a full set of brocade which wasso brittle it snapped when sat on. Let me know if you can gather any info please. Cheers

And ask him where the other half of my caliper is

It must be the same car. I have the half a calliper the seats out of it, and the rh tank. It was fitted with a 1300 GT engine and box, S calipers and 120 speedo, when we got it. We thought we needed the seats, and put some cooper brakes on it, but could only find half a caliper, obviously we took the speedo out! It was in a pretty bad way, so we also took the engine out and we may have put a Riley elf unit in to sell.

We bought it at what could best be described as a "Dutch auction". Where we and the other potential buyer shouted our bids out until the opponent backed down.

The other story that went with this car, was that it had been restored in the early nineties!

The engine was actually an MED 1380 fast road spec head and 266 cam. I recently rebuilt it for a customer.

Fascinating stuff this. It has to be the same car as the green Riley lump is sat in my garage with a 12g295 head loosely attached. Pretty grotty car but it was on my doorstep and I run a scheme where I rehouse anything Mk 1 so I had no option. Bit like Paul O Grady 'for the love of dogs'

My investigations are now complete, I'll send you a PM with the details.