[box] Welcome to Treasures: this is a new section where we invite you to tell us about an object or item that you treasure. It might be sentimental, it might be valuable, it might be part of a collection, or it might be something you just can’t live without. If you have a treasure that we can feature here, let us know! Email us at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au and tell us about it.[/box]
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] H [/dropcap]ave you seen this car?
It is not lost, stolen, missing, for sale or sold, but it was once a much-loved little mover for Cheryle (Chez) and Terry Wilson, a couple from Portland, who have set out to try and find where it may have ended up since they last saw it in the 1970s.
At first glance, it looks like a regular old Mini Minor with some sexy mag wheels, but look again.
This Mini is actually more mini than a Mini thanks to some custom work by Terry and his former panel beating workmates Peter Hudson, who now lives in WA, and Kevin Radcliffe.
“The boss (Peter) brought the car into work one day and asked what we might be able to do with it, so I said I would have a bit of a go at modifying it,” Terry explained.
Terry removed a metre from the middle of the Mini so that the back seat became the front seat, giving a whole new meaning to the term “back seat driver”.
“You actually drove it from the back seat. People thought I must have just chopped the back off, but when they opened the boot, there was a normal size boot: the piece that was missing was from the middle of the car,” he said.
Terry Wilson, of Portland, was the man behind the modification.[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T [/dropcap]he body modification meant that the Mini was no longer roadworthy in the technical sense, but it still made a serious impression at the Portland drag races.
The three men raced the car for fun during the mid 1970s and Terry’s tweaks to the motor saw the Mini Minor move in a major way.
“Kevin was driving it and it was a beast. We asked him how fast he was going and he said he was afraid to look,” Terry laughed.
“At one point, though, he said the speedo had gone past where it should go.”
After two or three years of fun with the car, Peter apparently sold it to Mini World in Melbourne and it was never heard of again.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] L [/dropcap]ate last year, however, Chez decided to try and track the car down via online advertisements on ebay and Gumtree and while she received a healthy number of Mr Bean jokes in reply, there have been no confirmed sightings.
“One person told us it was listed on ebay, but it was not the same car,” she said.
“For all we know, it might have been recycled and turned into a washing machine,” Terry added.
Perhaps also keep an eye peeled for a washing machine with one hell of a spin cycle.
[box type=”bio”] If you can help with any information about the modified Mini Minor, please contact Chez at portlandautowreckers@hotmail.com or on 0428 508 998[/box]