My first car was a cherry red 850 Traveller. My elder brother and I pooled our resources and, with a little help from our father, we purchased the immaculate Mini from a friend. It cost $850 – we lived in Zimbabwe at the time – one Zimbabwean dollar for each cubic centimetre. And it was superb.
It was big enough to swallow all our mates when heading off to cricket and hockey matches and yet it ran on the whiff of an oily rag for weeks. It was dog slow, but because you only sat a few inches off the grounds, it always felt far quicker.
It taught me the vital importance in maintaining momentum at all costs – sustaining speed and saving fuel were pretty important when you were constantly broke and petrol was rationed.
I remember how the lightest touch of its vast thin-rimmed steering wheel would instantly dart its snub little nose into corners; how its floor-mounted nipple controlling the headlamp beam and dip made such ergonomic sense; how its ET-fingered indicator stalk illuminated the cabin at night; how it whined like a diving Stuka in first gear; how tactile flicking its toggle switches felt, and how quickly its long wand-like gearlever could be snicked through its gate.
It served us faultlessly for three years. Bits fell off, it took plenty of abuse but never once did it let us down. I loved that Mini and Minis in general ever since.