When you first meet 75-year-old Nigel Barfoot, you could be forgiven for assuming he’s owned his late-model Mini Clubman Estate for a great many years. Having started out as an apprentice at Longbridge before spending most of his subsequent career at Cowley, Nigel has in-depth knowledge of BMC, British Leyland and its successors; and he’s been an avid Mini enthusiast since buying a secondhand MkI in the late ’60s. Interestingly though, Nigel’s current Mini has been his for only the last four years – and it wasn’t exactly his first-choice model.
“It was back in 2019 when I really fancied the idea of owning a Moke,” explains Nigel, “but asking prices of £20,000-plus put me off. I then started looking at Mini Pick-Ups, but again you can pay £12,000-£15,000 for a decent one of those, which was more than I wanted to spend.”
Such is the way of online searches, however, Nigel ended up buying something that wasn’t on his original wish list: “I’d been looking on eBay, which then went on to make suggestions of
