by Stuart
6. May 2010 11:46
After a few beers Martin and I decided that we would but a mini and enter some rallies. Perhaps even the world rally. Basically we wanted to do this -
I owned a mini when I was younger and loved driving it and Martin had driven one once. Also, I have fixed just about everything that could go in it as anyone who remembers my 1975 clubman estate would testify. It was held together by insulation tape and ran on WD40.
It will also fit in my garage – my wife tells me I can buy anything that fits in my garage.
We checked a couple on Ebay and found we could buy a 90’s mini in repairable condition for around £500. I calculated bringing it up to scratch with roll cages etc. would cost another £2K and then another £500 for a trailer.
We checked out some local events and they all talked about this Group A and Group N stuff.
There are 3 categories we could enter-
Group A - this seems to be production cars that are highly modified - basically you can do pretty much what you want.
Group N - unmodified production cars - you can do some minor stuff around suspension but not much in terms of performance. May get away with a stage 1 tune which is a modified exhaust and tune.
Historic - an old car.
To race I think you have to have a car that has been Homologised (such as a mini cooper S) or (re-)built to the homogenised spec – so I think you can take a standard 1969 mini and rebuilt to cooper s. So for minis that pretty much puts you in historic.
Here are the Homologation papers - http://mk1-performance-conversions.co.uk/homologation_papers.htm
There seem to be a list of historic homologations here - http://www.fia.com/resources/documents/1906603385__Historic_Pre_Homologations_a.pdf
And current ones here - http://www.fia.com/en-GB/sport/Pages/Homologations.aspx
Unfortunately old mini coopers now seem to go for about 20K. We might get a 1970’s 1275GT though. My mate had one of these and I remember it was a rocket. He sold it for about £500!
Then all we need is to empty my garage, find the money and time and were in business.