Genuine survivors don’t come along too often. As the years creak by and metal shows increasing keenness to slowly return to the elements from whence it came, original examples of solid and unrestored Minis become increasingly few and far between. Which makes Tom Ashby’s late-nineties Sports Pack-equipped Cooper particularly special. “I am the car’s second owner, and have owned it for fifteen years now,” he explains. “I got it for my 18th birthday, and back then it had just 26,000 miles on the clock.” Peeping at the dash today, we see that those little numbers have only spooled around to a mere 34,000. That works out to an average of around 530 miles a year throughout his ownership, which goes some way to explain its extraordinary tidiness and solidity. It lives…
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Mini (Digital) - 1 Issue, Summer 2023