PROJECT MINI CLUBMAN PART 4

This pint-sized Mini has always promised to offer us a king-sized dilemma when it comes to the bodywork. There was only one small area of obvious rust, and that was the offside A-panel between the door and the front wing. That is not a difficult repair in itself, but it has a tricky knock-on effect in this case. The problem here is two-fold. On the one hand there are minor blemishes all over the car, and sorting out one area will always make the paint next to it look worse. I could live with that if it was all original paint that just needed preserving and where the blemishes could be passed off as patina, but this is where the second problem arises – this car is a patchwork mix of original paint and localised resprays, with every touch-up seeming to be a slightly different shade!

Actually I can add a third problem to that mix, because we