James May, the only Top Gear presenter you’d actually want to meet, recently bought a rare and expensive car. Whenever someone who makes, or made, a living driving cars is willing to spend their own money on something, you may want to take notice. Although this is a not-at-all-disguised advertisement for his gin brand, there are still plenty of interesting comments and opinions on his new purchase, and as you would expect, the state of the car industry in general. Hint, you could say the car is Miniature in size.
Mini
Captain Slow Has A New Grand Tourer
The video begins with our favorite presenter standing in front of a in typical rain-soaked English weather. After a brief intro, May walks in front of a green, classic Mini Cooper revealing what he’s actually bought. Anyone familiar with his taste in cars likely wasn’t taken in by the Ferrari rouse anyway.
Not Your Everyday Mini Cooper
From what I’ve gleaned from watching BBC America, England is absolutely soaked with Minis. They are everywhere, driven by everyone, often up and down stairs and through shopping malls. They’re particularly popular with people involved in capers and heists. For whatever reason, a favorite of people dressed as gorillas. Again, what TV would have me believe.
1989 Rover Mini RSP Cooper Prototype
This isn’t your run-of-the-mill Mini Cooper . This is an extremely collectible 1989 Rover Mini Cooper RSP, May recently bought at auction. In 1989, Rover, the company that owned Mini before BMW, decided to bring back the Cooper name and built three prototypes from the more pedestrian Mini 30 it was building. Of those three, this is the only one known to still exist. The car is powered by a 1.3L(1,275cc) engine, instead of the 30’s 1.0-liter. It received a nicer interior, a sunroof, 12-inch Minilite wheels, sportier suspension, and different exterior trim. May’s car appears to be in like-new condition, which you would expect since he bought it with just 996 miles on the odometer.
May Might Have Thoughts On Modern Cars
May survives this entire 13-minute and 24-second video without being chased by a leopard or driving his car from a recliner strapped to the roof . He does, however, point out how hard the car is to work on due to its tight packaging and part of the ownership experience is the privilege of fixing it. He describes his first simple repair that turned into a project when he had to remove a large portion of the front-end to get to what should have been an easily accessible component—the Mini really was ahead of its time.
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Although James describes the car as “hopeless” and goes through a laundry list of faults, his love for the car is obvious. Beyond him explicitly saying so. He describes washing the car for the first time and ripping a trim strip off with his drying chamois. He complains about the windows fogging, the worthless HVAC system, the rattles and buzzes all before saying how superior the car is to modern cars. He’s probably right. He grinds on journalists’ favorite platitude of oversized modern cars while folded inside into a car he admits will kill him in the smallest of accidents. May then swoons at the driver involvement, right as the engine dies almost on que. Again, he’s not wrong about any of this.
Everyone Should Own A Mini
