Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Rick]

Morning all,

Today's talking point, the Cooper and Cooper S versions of the Mini. Does anyone here own either variant now, or have recollections of owning one of these pocket rockets back in the day?



RJ
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[badhuis]

At the age of 18-23 I had a friend who was deep into Minis. At that time (early eighties) Coopers were worth next to nothing. He picked up a running Cooper S with twin tanks for 100 guilders - about 60 UKP and drove this a few months until the seat worked its way through the very rotten floor. This was before the yearly car inspection was introduced....
I used an old genuine 970cc (I think?) Cooper for a few months. The starter motor did not work so I always parked on a slope near our house.
Later my friend had a couple of Innocenti Cooper 1300. These were assembled/built in Italy in the mid 1970s and used the 1275 Cooper S engine. They had a very nice instrument panel, from left to right all the width of the car, with (Italian) gauges. They also had small quarter lights in the front windows, and Italian electrics (non Lucas). Are worth a small fortune now. I remember with him buying one and on the way home, on the motorway, going past everyone with a speed of well over 160 km/h (100 mph). My friend lived at his parents, fixing cars were done on the street and the boot of his mini was always full of tools.
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a car stops being fun when it becomes an investment

[petelang]

I owned two minis in my early years. One was a 1965 model which after a very short period caused me considerable grief in 1973. Driving home from work in heavy East London traffic on a foul wet cold night, the engine suddenly stopped and all lights, wipers, everything went dead. Got out in the icy driving horizontal rain, opened the boot and found the battery had departed through the rotten boot floor and was lying under the car!

My second attempt did not prove much better, a 68 model. Seemed quite sound and corrosion free but when I had a friend follow me one day he flagged me down to stop as he said the car was "going sideways" on the road. Subsequent inspection identified the left rear radius arm had worn an elongated slot in the subframe and was moving back and forth a good one and a half inches!
Apart from me being over 6ft and finding driving these cars such an uncomfortable experience they were the most problematic and unreliable cars I ever had. Consistently breaking down and stopping when it was wet, wipers sized up, radiators leaking, electrics breaking, suspension components failed and everything was so impossible to access to fix. I vowed never again!

[Ellis]

It is one of my regrets that I did not get to own a Mini Cooper or Cooper S and it was my own fault.
In the early 1970s I refused the offer of a Ford 100E which had been owned by an elderly neighbour and my father was miffed. Shortly afterwards a 1963 or 1964 Morris Mini Cooper 1071 S came up for sale in the village. It was red with a black roof and registered 713 LOH.

I was not allowed it having refused the Ford!

There were quite a few Mini Coopers around here in the 60s and 70s but very few 1275 S versions. I have never seen a 970S except in photographs.

I used to love to listen to a Cooper or Cooper S engine being enthusiastically driven, there's no sound quite like it. An Austin/Morris 1300GT sounds similar but not quite the same.

There is a genuine Downton Mini Cooper S on Anglesey and still with it's original owner from 1966. He bought it new from Meredith and Kirkham, BMC dealers in Bangor, North Wales and the Downton conversion was fitted by the dealer. It's green with a white roof and has been the subject of several magazine articles. I have seen it a few times on good weather Sundays.

The last one I saw was a 1971 Cooper S which turned out to be a clever fake. It's owner was very upset when he discovered the truth. I posted about it not long after I joined OCC in 2011 but unfortunately at the owner's request I deleted the photographs.
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1964 Jaguar Mark 2 3.4 litre
1962 Land Rover Series 2a 88"
2002 BMW M3 E46 Cabriolet

[peppiB]

My first job I was taken to work and back each day in a Mini Cooper. The guy had won the pools and bought a large detached house, VDP 4 litreR, and the Cooper. Bit later in the 60's and I had a Riley Elf and my mate had a Cooper. We were both aged 20 and his insurance was affordable. How times change.

Coming home from a car treasure hunt, popular at the time, he roared past me. About a mile along the road he had turned it over into a field, with a fence post passing between him and his brother. Could have been nasty! Car a total write off

[47Jag]

My story is not about ownership of a Cooper S but my only involvement iwith one. I emigrated to Canada in April 1964 and within a week of arriving I got a job at a BMC dealership in Scarborough. It wasn't just any BMC dealership it was owned by the then Canadian sports car champion Grant Clark. He had recently competed at the Spring racing meet at Sebring in Florida under contract to the Austin Motor Company of Canada in both a Mini Cooper 1275 S and a lightweight Austin Healey 3000 (767KNX) paired with Paddy Hopkirk. Both cars DNFd. The big Healey was I think entered by Downton and went back to England. The Cooper S was allocated to Clark's stock so it came back to Clark's garage for repair (it had thrown a rod thru' the block). It was lying out back when I started awaiting a new block coming from Blighty. The job was really interesting wororking on all sorts of exotica. My first job was replacing the clutch on a Ferrari 250 GT About 6 weeks later we were preparing a Lotus 19 with a Chevrolet 327 engine for Grant to compete in the Canadian sports car championship when a bunch of 'suits' arrived. They were the police investigating a stolen car ring apparently run by Mr. Clark. To help finance his racing Anyhooo, next morning Mr. Clark is in jail and there's pandemonium in the workshop. The other guys in the shop, a Scotsman, an Englishman & an Irishman (not a joke) had signed for loans on 3 cars that had subsequently been sold. There was an Ogle SX1000, an MGB and a 1275S. The only asset was the 1275S 'out back'. The new block was already in the stock, so it was all hands to the pumps to get it up and running before the bailiffs arrived. We had it finished about 3pm and I was taken for a test drive around the suburbs by the mad Scottish foreman. What a ride!!! The car was then sold back to A.M.C. of C and then presumably sold to an unsuspecting customer. The new owner would be unaware that it had already done nearly 3 hours around Sebring not long before.

Art