In the August 2018 issue of MiniWorld we featured David Anning’s previous Mini project. It was a heavily modified saloon with wide wheels, rollcage and a rip-snorting Yamaha R1 motorbike engine. “My right foot was too heavy and I kept breaking the chain and it was a bit too ‘look at me’.” It had to go. “I just wanted something that looked a bit more original.” He found a lightly modified 1974 Mini Van, in white with a black roof, on a car dealer’s website. “I part-exed the R1 for the Van and got a little bit of money my way.”
The tidy-looking, rebuilt 998cc Van arrived on a flatbed lorry in June 2019 and the R1 was taken away. “The Van needed petrol so I drove it to the end of my road and the head gasket went.
I’d owned it probably 20 minutes and blew it up. I had to ask my wife, Jenna, to bring a tow rope.” David’s cousin is, happily, Phil Anning, of Anning’s Race and Restoration in Ashford, Kent. “We towed it to Phil and he took the head off and said that the bores were full of water and
