The Collins MINI fleet has a new member and Modern MINI has a new project car: an early R50 Cooper. Editor Martyn tells us more about his purchase.
This whole thing started with an email that pinged into my inbox on the last day of November 2016. As the Editor of Modern MINI magazine that’s nothing unusual, as I get hundreds of emails every day. It was the title of this email that piqued my interest: ‘Original R50’. I opened the email quickly to discover that reader Andrew Boreham had come across an early ‘OBL’ R50 Cooper and was wondering if I was interested in buying it.
There was no denying that the thought of owning an R50 Cooper hadn’t been far from my mind since featuring (and getting a ride round Plant Oxford in) John Corbett and Tanya Field’s Coopers (Y501OBL and Y304OBL) for the July/August issue last year. Sadly there were no pictures attached to Andrew’s email, so I replied asking him for some then put thoughts of early Coopers to the back of my mind and got on with putting the next issue together.
Tidy and original
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