Well I orginally was going to buy from a guy in Georgia, but that fell through. So I ended up contacting a guy in Florida who is an actual importer/dealer. I learned there are a lot of legal barriers to jump. First of all it is illegal to have a mini that is less than 25 years old in the states. Now the ones I have looked at are 99's. So what they do is re-vin the car and call it a re-shell to get it through custums and import. After you get the car here in order to get it past dmv and inspections you have to sell the car to an agency which does their "legal magic", then buy it back for a $150 fee. That part was a little confusing, but you are able to legally get your title and paper work done without worrying about having it siezed by dmv. After you go through all of that you have to find an insurance company that will still insure the car, since it is a classic and still a little "grey" in terms of vin numbers and such, if they were to really research the history of the car. Well turns out Hargerty insurance will insure re-vinned cars, since their specialty is classics and hot-rods. They said it is very normal for cars to be re-vinned and not 100% legal, and they would insure the car for agreed value with a picture of the car. Well here are new pics of what i'm getting. It is a 99 registered as a 71, 120 miles on the clock, been in car shows and magazines. Full leather interior, and he is swapping the rims for me to some other lighter weight wheels, they look much better too.

Heres an interior pic

Oh yeah, this is also the sport package, so it has koni shocks, negative camber front and rear, and adjustable tie rods with 13x7 wheels. Has about 85hp fuel injected and weights 1400lbs.

oh word. That thing is tite my friend.

damn that is hot!

Now I guess this is how I can get that new Civic Type R over here...

would be pretty hard to have sex in that thing

Nah, check out the back seats https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/boink.gif

Heres a pic of the rims that are going on. This is a custom job done called the zemax.

thats sweet...

id rock it fo shizzy

Pretty sweet man!

haha could probably beat a fair amount of civics in that thing too!

That is pretty cool.



How much $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$?

That mini is just straight badass.

What are you planning to do with this little gem??



I see them Autocross from time to tim ethey do pretty good..just not as good as my TII.

Hehe...well more than I was going to pay originally.... try 18.5k. Although he does have about 22k invested in the car and its been garaged with only 120 miles on it. I did some research and found that a mini between 1960-1975 (which sold for about $2500) restored or in mint condition is worth about 21k on average, and also the older they are the more they are worth. When John Cooper died in 2000 they stopped production and closed shop, so these cars are a rare find and will be worth a pretty penny some day, such as statitics have already shown.

Well no huge modifying, maybe some small stuff to help enhance performance. No racing or hard abusive driving, i'll let the rx7 take care of that. Just a toy for me and my girlfriend to cruise around in, she'll most likely be driving it to work a good bit of the time.

i like those "vintage" minis



mike

Damn that's very https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...DIR#>/cool.png Quite a bit of work to get it, but congrats:bigthumb:



:bigthumg: wtf is a thumg https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/biggrin.png

The only thing that kinda makes me sad about minis is that they dont have a huge amount of potential. Well i dont really know, but i know ive never seen a 500 hp mini.



(waits for someone to prove him wrong)

I am a member over on minimania.com and while no one that I have seen has broken 500hp there have been some that broke 200hp on the mini engine. Keep in mind this car weights below 1500lbs (half what an rx7 weighs) there is no reason for that much power......120hp from one of the stock mini 1400cc motors is a lot of power. There are some people who put honda vtec motors in tuned to make 175hp and of course you can turbo charge any of the mini engines to produce higher hp. You have all the normal bolt ons for these cars, and parts are inexpensive, very inexpensive. These cars aren't meant for drag racing anyways, they do make good auto-x, road, and ralley cars. There is a huge amount of racing history behind the mini.

A little spendy for me but a very unique car to have State side. :bigok:

i think it's funny that your wheels are as big as my brakes https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/BURNOUT.gif



will anything larger than a 13" wheel fit on those?

I doubt you could put anything bigger than a 13" wheel on, but i'm not sure. Most of the cars came equiped with a 10" wheel, and some of the later models had a 12".



Well I take a plane down Monday to pick it up!!

get lots of pics of the engine and ****

heres a pic of the engine....1300cc's of pure power https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...#>/BURNOUT.gif

nice whers teh turbo =)

Turbo..... what turbo? Oh you must be talking about the money pit car.

Turbo..... what turbo? Oh you must be talking about the money pit car.[/quote]

bastars u just gave me a hard on

Check out thissitefor some cool Mini pics. Also while we are on the subject I saw a Mini with 15" wheels at "MiniMeet East 2000" in Jersey. Another good article was in the October issue ofMiniWorldon V-tec Minis. Just think......160hp before mods in that little car. Then there is nitrous, bolt-ons.........hmmmmmm!