Recently I’ve been thinking an awful lot about my first love. No, not the young lady (who shall remain nameless) that I spent five years of secondary school fawning over with little result, but rather the first car I ever owned.

My Mini. My Mighty Mini.

My first Mini-gone but never forgotten

My first Mini-gone but never forgotten

I fell for the Mini at an early age, I must’ve been around 6 or 7 and I remember my Brother in law taking me around the back lanes of East Devon in his white hill-climb Mini. The car was insanely quick, and it seemed to handle like my wheels at the time, a red pedal go-kart! I was hooked, and when the time car and I wanted a my first car, I wanted a Mini like Charlie’s. Through contacts at a local Mini specialist, he helped me find that car and soon enough it was mine.

My first Mini was a cracking car. Winnie, as I soon named her, set me back £850 back in 1999 (I paid an extra fifty quid for the white Cooper style roof) was, to me, the perfect car. At 17 fuel was cheap, and earning £300 a month doing cleaning meant I had cash in my pocket, and petrol in my car.

Over the next year and a bit I tinkered and tweaked the little Mini City until it gained a set of Cooper stripes, wide minilite style wheels, ‘Austin Cooper’ badges and a dummy filler neck. An old blue Mayfair gave up its seats to replace the brown vinyl she came with (although they were soon replaced by a set of bargain Cobra bucket seats!), and a custom made MDF dash must have given an extra 20-30 BHP, minimum.

I went everywhere I could with Winnie, London to Brighton, The Riviera Run, Mini In The Park, all over country. People said I’d never make it, but not once did the car ever let me down. The same couldn’t be said when my brother dared borrow her, she’d cough, splutter, and sometimes just stop-she knew it wasn’t me driving her, and she wasn’t happy about it!

As with many things in life, fate intervened.

One evening, on a journey I need not have made, a fox leapt out in front of the car, I swerved, stupidly, to avoid it. A Fiesta coming towards me made me turn back hard, putting Winnie and me, into the hedge. With wheels buckled, and the subframe bent, the insurance company was quick to write off the then 13 year old Mini.

I was car-less once again.

Still, Winnie may have been my first Mini, but she certainly wasn’t my last! 17 others followed, but I’ll bore you with those another time.