Buying your child a car is generous. Buying it three years before they can drive as your restoration project is genius. Alec Bryan did just that.

"I never meant it to end up like this, it just kind of snowballed," says Alec Bryan of his retro-themed 1987 Mini Mayfair. It&undefined;s a familiar story, as any car builder will tell you. What starts out as a simple tidy up quickly spirals into a full blown project that swallows more time and money than you would like to remember.

What makes Alec&undefined;s story intriguing though is that this saloon was actually earmarked for his daughter Laura, back in 2000 when she still had nearly three years before she could legally drive. Laura didn&undefined;t have to twist her dad&undefined;s arm too much though, as the 46-year-old has owned a Mini in some shape or another for nearly 30 years.

A Wolseley Hornet was his first in 1976 and, in addition to the retro saloon shown here, there&undefined;s a 1275 GT and an automatic Mini Mayfair in the Bryan garage. What&undefined;s more, Alec is the proud chairman of the Middlesex Mini Owner&undefined;s Club.

Despite Alec being happy to fuel Laura&undefined;s enthusiasm, he wasn&undefined;t actively looking for a new Mini. "I was offered the car by a guy who&undefined;d bought it for his nephew. It was an auto and had lost all forward gears," says Alec. "Getting the box fixed was going to be costly and, seeing as he knew I was into Minis, the chap offered it to me for 120. It had Cooper rims on already so I bought it and reversed the quarter-of-a-mile home!"

Alec wasn&undefined;t perturbed by this and the first job was to get the Mini driving in the right direction. The autobox was beyond redemption so Alec hoisted the whole lot out and dropped in a 1000cc engine and manual gearbox he&undefined;d salvaged from a ?15 Mini.

With the replacement engine and box, a few localised repairs and the odd component, the Mayfair was on the road until 2002. Alec was then given an early ashtray and the Group 2 arches. Being a big fan of early Minis it was a foregone conclusion that he&undefined;d start to imagine these parts and a whole lot more finding their way onto the Mayfair. So, in the summer of 2003 Alec gave into temptation and pulled the Mini apart. The front-end went into the skip and a new A-panel, wings and front panel were skilfully welded in place by Baker Bros - a local mobile welding outfit. "They did a superb job," enthuses Alec."So many Minis are spoilt when the bonnet doesn&undefined;t line up, but the fit of the new panels is spot-on."

No sooner had the welds cooled, Alec was getting ready to lay on a few layers of the Mini&undefined;s original Targa Red. "It made sense to stick with the original colour and I prepped and sprayed it over a few nights," he says. "It was a bit of a pain spraying it because it&undefined;s so cramped in the garage. Then there were insect problems but I got round that by spraying insecticide an hour before I began," he says.

The roof was sprayed a nondescript black, as were the Group 2 arches. Compared to some of the other tasks that Alec completed it&undefined;s surprising that these arches caused him the biggest headache. "I used paint stripper to get the original colour off and it ate into the gel coat," remembers Alec. "I ended up re-etching them before I could paint them." Bolting up the chrome came next and Alec accumulated much of this through Mini shows, the most recent addition being the Aston-style cap that cost a bargain 12.

Other shrewd buys included the front bumper for 10 and the rear wiper for 15 from an outing to Beaulieu. "The grille&undefined;s the best though," says Alec, "you can&undefined;t beat the look and it&undefined;s my favourite bit on the car." A lucky find came in the shape of the MkIII bootlid that&undefined;s been modified to accept MkII fixings, including the hinged numberplate and light, 1275 Cooper badge and the period Raydot lamp. "My youngest daughter&undefined;s friend&undefined;s mum knew a chap who was clearing out a load of Mini parts," Alec says. "He asked me to take it all away. The bootlid was ideal and I also got a 998 Cooper engine, carbs and loads of other stuff."

While the body was looking a lot happier, things weren&undefined;t so rosy in the engine department. Unsurprisingly, the motor from the 15 scrapper was on its last legs and burning oil. Thanks to a chance conversation with his local MoT tester, Alec was soon lowering in a replacement, a 1275 motor from an early &undefined;90s Cooper. "I got talking to the chap and he knew a bloke who wanted shot of an engine and gearbox," he recalls. "It was a good buy for 50 but it came without ancillaries like the carb and alternator."

The engine&undefined;s now complete with an MG Metro carb and inlet manifold plus a Maniflow LCB mated to an RC40 exhaust. The obligatory K&N filter also features and although Alec wasn&undefined;t bothered about tuning the engine he couldn&undefined;t resist a decent cam. "My GT&undefined;s built for speed, its got the lot lightened and balanced 1330, modified head, roller rockers - so I didn&undefined;t feel the need to tune this engine," explains Alec.

"But after a Stage 1 kit the best performance mod for a Mini is a decent cam, so I decided to fit a Swiftune SW5 and leave it pretty much at that."

Alec&undefined;s few tweaks help the Mini to notch up well over 70 bhp on the dyno and he reports its &undefined;bags of fun&undefined; to drive. To help make the most of the Mini&undefined;s new-found power he&undefined;s also uprated both the suspension and the brakes.

As with the engine, sensible but effective mods have ruled the day and, true to the rest of the car, the upgrades haven&undefined;t cost Alec an arm and a leg either. "I had the bottom arms waiting to go on the GT, but I decided to fit them to the saloon instead. The dampers were only 11 each and I fitted heavy-duty tie-rods as I like them on all my Minis," explains Alec. "I had the Metro vented discs lying around too, and the feel of the four-pots is really solid. I&undefined;m not a big fan of servo&undefined;d brakes on a Mini and this set-up is miles better." A set of braided hoses help towards the solid pedal feel, and extra stopping power is provided by a set of Minifin rear drums.

Alec might have drawn the line at using early Mini running gear but he was still hellbent on the retro theme for the rest of the car. The bodywork was certainly up to scratch but the interior posed a problem, so Alec bolted in the trim from a &undefined;90s Cooper, Sounds bizarre but it works really well and what&undefined;s more, it was perhaps the biggest bargain of the build. "One of the lads in the club was ripping it out of his Cooper, I thought it would complement the rest of the car and it was a real find at only 30," reveals Alec. "One of the front seats was ripped but I got it repaired by a guy who trims hot rod interiors."

Alec had the ideal substitute for the standard Mayfair dash - an early Cooper one with 100 mph speedo, "When that was in, I sat back and thought I was really getting the right feel to the car," he says, "Mind you, it caused a few problems. The backing card is really fragile and I messed up the first set cutting holes for the tweeters," Other club members helped Alec out with additional bits and pieces. "I&undefined;ve been very lucky with parts," he reflects.
The dealing&undefined;s come to halt for now though, as Alec reckons he&undefined;s finished the Mayfair. "It&undefined;s definitely turned out as I hoped it would and apart from a bit of bodywork there&undefined;s nothing else I want to do to it. I&undefined;m just going to hang onto it and enjoy it - we&undefined;re even going to use it with another couple of cars in the club for an Italian Job themed wedding. We&undefined;ve got blue boiler suits to wear too!" laughs Alec.
Now that the Mayfair&undefined;s complete. Alec is eyeing up his other Minis. The auto is now going to go to Laura but it&undefined;s the frontless GT that&undefined;s next in line for her father. Considering he&undefined;s just finished one full-scale rebuild, you&undefined;d think Alec might be wary of picking up a spanner again. Then again, some people just can&undefined;t help themselves when it comes to building Minis. "I tidy the GT up every winter but this time I&undefined;m going to do it properly, with a complete new front-end and a really good two-pack respray," he enthuses. Oh well, don&undefined;t say we didn&undefined;t warn you ...

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What to do when you?re tired of dreary day-to-day driving? Follow Middlesex Mini Club?s lead and hire yourself a test track for some high speed action.

The Middlesex Mini Club was formed four years ago when a few local enthusiasts got together. Since then, the club has grown steadily with membership currently standing at around 50 members. We&undefined;ve bumped into them at various shows and events over the last few years, including the 2002 London to Brighton Run, where they picked up the John Cooper trophy for best club stand.

When they contacted us and told us about their forthcoming trip to the Haynes MotorMuseum, we knew we were in for a great day out. For those of you that have never visited the Haynes Museum, it really is a wicked venue. The museum itself keeps many of the cars that Haynes have used to produce their world famous workshop manuals, from Minis to Mustangs, but more interestingly, they also have their very own test track. Top guys and gals that they are, the MMC had rented the track for the day, intent on proving once and for all who had the quickest car.

Seven cars turned up, with several entrants dropping out at the last minute, benefiting those who did turn up as they had a longer go on the track. The track itself is fairly small, resembling a go-cart track, but it was ideal for the agile Mini with many of the entrants commenting that they never got out of second gear!

With no real supervision, the gang was left to their own devices and proceeded to rip around the rack to the sound of squealing rubber and howling engines. Various layouts are possible on the track thanks to an abundance of traffic cones, and various different routes were mapped out for some improvised time trials. It was interesting to note that it wasn&undefined;t simply a case of the most powerful car winning, as a number of the stock motors out-performed the larger capacity engines. Still, there is always one exception but well done to Paul for giving it a go although I&undefined;m not sure I buy his ecxcuse: "lt was the wrong type of tarmac!", which sounds like something Railtrack would come up with!

Should you be looking for a venue for your next club outing, then you would be hard pushed to find a more suitable location than the Haynes Motor Museum.

Classic good looks and driving pleasure are what this Cooper S is all about - even at almost 40 years of age.

As the Cooper S hits 40, it?s good to see a car like Ty Harvey?s S for a number of reasons. This car has the potential to remind you of all the stages the S has travelled through, starting with the original pocket rocket lusted after by schoolkids and celebrities alike. Well who could ever have resisted a car like this in the classic Old English White with black roof, with vented steels and red and grey brocade interior? Ty?s car also provides us with a timely reminder of when the S was no more than just another old Mini, with a reputation for rust and trouble.

To most in the closing years of the Spangle-flavoured &undefined;70s and into the early ?80s, a lot of Coopers were just another old car languishing in the no man?s land between useful cheap transport and that final trip to the scrapyard. Worth plundering for bits, but very little else.

Ty?s Cooper S hadn?t quite plummeted to such desolate levels but it had hit on pretty hard times, and it was to become something we?ll find increasingly hard to envisage as the S gets even rarer and their values continue to climb - a true home restoration job. Ty?s been in the motoring trade for most of his working life so he had the skills, experience and contacts to take on a restoration job, but as he tells the story, you guess he probably wasn?t planning on taking one on at the time.

His first encounter with the S is one of those classic stories of being in the right place at the right time. Ty had been doing the servicing on a friend?s old Datsun for years and had tried to inexpensively keep the car going for its elderly owner Chris for as long as possible. The fateful day arrived when Ty had to admit defeat and Chris saw she?d have to get rid of the car. She mentioned that she also had an old Mini tucked away in the garage and would like to get rid of it at the same time.

?It wasn?t my intention to take on a restoration project; it was just there. I was going to get rid of both of the cars for Chris, as I thought it was just another old Mini. When I saw it, I thought, why not?? says Ty. This was in 1996 and the days of the cheap Cooper S were certainly long over. Since its manufacture the Cooper?s story had been quite eventful, so it?s no surprise Chris felt reluctant to get rid of it. She had two sons who had both owned a Cooper 5, driving them everywhere until, sadly, one son died. Chris started to use the Cooper as her own transport, but a few years later tragedy hit again when her husband died shortly after buying the then new Datsun. The S had obviously been well maintained, but was showing its age and Chris decided to store it in the garage.

And it was here that Ty first caught sight of it. The car was clearly shabby, but more importantly, it was complete and original. It was carefully recovered to Ty?s home garage and stripped to a shell. Like all good restoration stories, it was at this point Ty realised there was slightly less Mini there than there should have been. ?The floor, wheelarches and sills had all gone. A bit of the floor was there but the boot floor had totally gone,? he explains.

?We let in a whole new rear floor section including wheelarches, new inner and outer sills, A-panels and front wings. I thought I?d get someone else to carry out the welding, so I took it to my welder friend,? says Ty with a smile. ?He basically welded the shell together for me - he made it good.? With the shell now possessing enough rigidity to prevent it collapsing in the first stiff breeze, it was transported to a company in West Drayton for bead-blasting. ?The guy wouldn?t do the external panels for fear of distortion but he did all the underbonnet and underneath,? says Ty. This left the external bodywork which was hand flatted with Ty taking on most of the work.

The benefits of working in the trade became apparent when it was time to paint the shell, using two-pack paint. ?I?d booked some time at work to paint the wing... we painted the whole car,? he says with a chuckle. He struggled all through the resto with the temptation to modify the car. As he points out many modified parts are not only cheaper, they?re also a lot easier to get hold of. But the choice of paint type was to be the only deviation from the standard spec. ?I didn?t want cellulose,? he says, going on to explain he wanted the durability of the modern paint as he fully intended to use the car once it was finished.

The ?restore as opposed to replace? theme carried on when it came to the engine and gearbox though. ?People kept suggesting it would be cheaper to have a new engine, but it wouldn?t be the same. I used to take engine parts into work and shotblast it a bit at a time.? The engine was stripped and taken to an engineering company in Southall. ?I told them to take it to the next size up we could get away with,? says Ty. The block was rebored, while the crank was reground and fitted with new shells. The head was skimmed by 0.008 of an inch and just the exhaust valves needed replacing - not bad on an engine that Ty reckons has done around 112,000 miles and no doubt a testament to careful ownership earlier in the car?s life. The gearbox needed new mainshaft bearings and synchro cones, but again, wasn?t that bad.

The rebuild wasn?t all plain sailing though. ?Sometimes there were just bits everywhere in the garage. It was hard to imagine it was all just from this one car, and I used to think, where does this go?? says Ty. ?It was only when I started to build components into units that I started to get it straight again in my head. I?d build a unit and tuck it away in the corner.?

Next on the list was a new repro fabric-covered wiring loom, which came from the same source as many of the new parts. ?Around 90 per cent of the spares used to rebuild the car came from Mini Spares - all body, all mechanical - and the company was absolutely excellent.? Brand-new subframes were bought and sent t off to be powdercoated - again as part of Ty?s quest for long term durability. Ty kept the wet suspension system and replaced the Hydrolastic displacers. ?They were very expensive, about ?260 a corner I think. I was very tempted to go to a dry system because it was a lot cheaper, but what drove me was to keep the car as it was made. Principles rarely come cheaply.

The Mini was now starting n look like a car again but there was still a way to go. The twin tanks - still an option when this car was built in 1965 - were thankfully both sound and just needed to be cleaned out, repainted and refitted. The chrome around the front windows is original but he rear side windows were stripped so new glass seals could be fitted. And while they were in bits, Ty decided to get them rechromed and polished. ?They had to go to two separate companies - one to chrome, one to polish,? he says.

New stainless bumpers, overriders and corner bars were also bought. The chrome type were out of production at the time but Ty doesn?t see this as a major problem, just one less item that needs constant attention with metal polish. All handles and badges were stripped, cleaned and rechromed.

The interior of Ty?s S is all original except for the carpet which had completely rotted away. So he bought new carpet from Newton Commercial but the seats and the trim went through a far more personalised rejuvenation process. ?We used to sit on the patio scrubbing the seats like mad. My daughter Rachel used to help me, sitting there with nailbrushes and lots of soapy water.? It certainly paid off.

Although the trim isn?t immaculate, it shows this car has lived a little and eusures the finished car retains something that can so easily be retored out of a car - that little bit of character and, of course, the very important Mini smell of old vinyl and seat stuffing.

The 4.5" wheels rims were shotblasted and painted prior to the tyres being put on, which Ty had fitted from the rear to prevent any damage to the visible outside rim. The Dunlop SP Sport Sport tyres surprisingly came from a local tyre depot. ?The guy said they are quite hard to get hold of, and then he got me five tyres.?

Ty finally finished the Cooper in July 2000, after four years of graft, and even though he?d carried out most of work himself the bills headed a long way into four figures. He took the car to the Wembley Auto Show where he first encountered the Middlesex Mini Club, of which he is now an enthusiastic member. ?I parked in the public car park at the show, as they wouldn?t let you in unless you were a club member. I was looking at the autojumble and I met Alec who runs the club, although I didn?t know it was him at the time. He gave me a ticket and told me they hadn?t got any MkIs on the stand, and that?s when I signed up for the club.? If you want to do the same, you can contact Alec at the Middlesex Mini Club on 020 8581 4114.

Does Ty think that if he?d encountered the club earlier, it would have made the restoration easier? ?I don?t think that being a member of the club would have made much of a difference to me, but it probably would have made a big difference to someone who didn?t have my connections within the trade. I had the contacts already as I used to work on and repair Minis in my apprenticeship, even though I worked for a Vauxhall agent.?

As we stand in the middle of Harrow taking pictures of the S, it seems impossible to think this car has already got the best part of four decades under its belt, and Ty seems to find it just as user-friendly as it was when it was built. ?Whenever I go to one of the shows I drive it there and it goes to the club twice a month. People like to see it. They overtake, but they slow down to have a good look.?

So is this 40-year-old still relevant today? ?You can still keep up with everything on the A-roads, and on the country roads I don?t think there?s anything to beat it. When you?re driving up to Mini In The Park, the fun starts before and after the M40.?

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Turbo′d Mini saloons are quick, but with hardly any weight over the rear wheels, South African Orlando da Silva′s ?Bakkie? is something else.

On the rear number plate of Orlando da Silva?s Mini pick-up is the small and discreet inscription ?Turbo?. Most people who see this tend to laugh it off as another prat with a turbo sticker stuck on his two-stroke Trabant. However, in this case all is as it seems!

It?s obvious that the car has more to it than just a red paint job, those tyres stick out more than they should and the exhaust is made from a purposeful looking piece of stainless. It sends the old grey matter into pondering the meaning of it all.

At the front is where you start to realise that this Mini could pack quite a Maxi punch ? the lowered and holed bonnet suggests that there is a beast lurking within that is not what Sir Alec had planned when he originally stuck in an 850. We all know that the 1275 tends to run a little warm ? especially in our hot African sun ? but what on earth did this man do to his little motor to warrant all these holes? Lets take a trip back in time to when it all started. About 10 years ago, Orlando was bitten by the Mini racing bug and went out and bought himself a pick-up for ?135. The first thing he did was swap the 998 for a slightly bigger 1275 with twin 32 mm Dellorto carbs on a modified manifold. Later, the capacity grew to 1380cc via a rebore and courtesy of Nissan 1200 pistons. This satisfied Orlando for a while, until he was told by the boys in the racing fraternity that the two Dellortos were costing him power. So on went a 45 DCOE sidedraft Weber on a 4.5 in manifold. In its final reincarnation this motor wound up with a long stroke 84 mm crank brining it out to a block busting 1430cc complete with belt-drive vernier timing gear and 12.5:1 compression ratio. All was now as it should have been; the power was there and in this form Orlando became a regular sight at the local drag racing events, where he got his quarter-mile times down to 15.6 seconds with a terminal speed of 148 kmh.

Now most of us would be happy with a Mini that had this much power, but not Orlando. His aim was to be able to out accelerate those souped-up hot hatches, but how was he to achieve this? The only logical solution was a turbo. There isn?t a lot a room at the back of the Mini?s engine bay, as you well know. In fact, you battle to get a sidedraft on a decent length manifold without having to cut into the passenger compartment, so how on Earth did Orlando fit in a T2 turbo? Well, a self-fabricated exhaust and inlet manifold system was the only solution, so out came the drawing board, a plan was hatched and as you can see, it all came together rather nicely. Spec-wise the new engine is the well proven 1380cc running a compression ratio of 8.5:1 with 0.5 bar boost which, with the aid of a micro fueller, will be upgraded to 1 bar in the not to distant future. The turbo operates on the relatively easier-to-install suck-through method, the juice coming from a 45 DCOE sidedraft carb. The power continues to be pushed up into the realms of ?wow, man!? by the gas?flowed head which has over-sized valves controlled by a semi-race 544 grind cam. On a recent rolling-road session, the dials showed 102 bhp at the wheels. However, upgrading the boost should give the little Bakkie a good few bhp more. When the engine was first slotted in, the car was still running 10 in OZ mag alloys with Yoko AOO8s, but after a few runs it became apparent that more rubber was needed. Luckily for Orlando, one of his mates just happened to have a set of 13 in Minilite rims lying about, complete with part-worn BF Goodrich tyres. So, a deal was done and the 10 in rubber was put into retirement. This may not sound out of the ordinary for the hardened British Mini nut, but out here in Africa these tyres are out of most people?s price range ? way, way out.

The pick-up in its present form is capable of over 200 kmh. I say capable because Orlando, being the law-abiding citizen that he is, would never break the speed limit, no sir, Officer. As far as competing goes, Orlando hasn?t been able to do any quarter-mile runs due to the local track having closed before the new turbo motor was completed. Now having all this power would not make much sense if you couldn?t stop it. We all know that old Mini?s have terrible little drum brakes, don?t we? Orlando solved that problem too; a set of 7.5 in Cooper S discs were installed on the front of the Bakkie very early in its race career, while the rear has been treated to a set of finned alloy brake drums to help dissipate the heat quicker. In this form the brakes help to slow things down enough for your knuckles to regain their colour ? although a set of 8.4 in cross-drilled discs have recently been installed to make things that little bit easier to slow down.

Cooling is taken care of by a three-core side-mounted radiator, but without the engine-driven fan. ?It takes up too much power,? Orlando reckons. Instead, an electrical fan has been mounted on the inner wing and this cools the water down while the oil is taken care of by a front-mounted Cooper S oil cooler. Acceleration from rest is unbelievable and in wet or even damp conditions the turbo simply spins the front wheels through the gears, with the tyres fighting for grip. In fact, judicious use of the throttle and clutch is needed to move off in dry conditions without spinning the tyres off the rims and polluting the atmosphere with burnt rubber.

However, this car is no fly-by-night ?stick this here and see if it works? lash-up. Orlando has thought things through, a point I came to realise when he went over the car with me in detail, picking out small modifications he has carried out to things like the suspension ? and al in the pursuit of Fastest Time of The Day.

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