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In 1994, £2000 would buy a fairly reasonable secondhand car, particularly if you were looking for a runaround. We know this, because Michele's old and not especially lamented Nissan Micra had expired and we were looking for a replacement. Why, then, did we buy a not terribly reliable example of a then 35 year old car ? Because it was a Mini, of course !
The main reason why we wanted one is that, at that time, we lived in Brighton and used to go to Madeira Drive to watch the finish of the annual London to Brighton Mini Run. This was, and indeed still is, an incredible sight and a great deal of fun so we wanted to join in, hence Mini number 1 .
B611 HUF was our first Mini, costing us £2000. It was advertised as having a mileage of about 26,000, which it had indeed covered. Unfortunately, it had probably also covered another 100,000 odd miles which strangely didn't show on the milometer! We didn't believe the milometer in any case, but the car did have very straight clean bodywork, so we bought it anyway.
Our first impressions driving this example of Mr Issigonis's wonderwagon were of amazement. Neither of us had ever driven anything like it - everything felt so mechanical and the steering and cornering really were like a go-kart! Alas, the rot soon set in ...
Before long, we'd discovered a slight "teething problem". After about a hundred miles or so, the car would start to misfire, getting worse and worse until it just conked out. The problem was that the points were closing up, necessitating resetting them - which is a very fiddly job on a mini - before the engine would start again. We changed pretty well every part of the electrical system to try and cure this - alternator, coil , battery - you name it, we replaced it, but it didn't help. By this time, we were on first name terms with the local breakdown recovery men (!) but they couldn't sort it out, either. We even tried the local Rover dealer (name witheld to protect the incompetent) but still no joy.
In desperation, we decided to try work round the problem by fitting electronic ignition. SUCCESS!! - from then onwards, the car ran like a sewing machine and on the whole was pretty reliable over the next three years..
The highlight of our time with the silver scream machine was two appearances in the London to Brighton Mini Runs of 1996 & 1997 in convoy with over 1000 other minis. Eventually, though, it was all too much for the old girl and the unseasonably warm weather of the 1998 run terminally overheated the engine. We never got any closer to Brighton than back home to Worthing that day and only made it there on the back of a recovery trailer !
Although we got the car running again, it was never really the same so we had to make the hard decision to replace it. This led inevitably to Mini No.2.