Road To Le Mans Classic

A trip to the legendary Le Mans Classic weekend in France is a dream event for petrolheads and classic car fans. It’s made even better if you throw a couple of Minis into the experience.

- Kieran Murphy

My friend Scott returned from the Le Mans Classic in July 2014, having completed it using his TVR Cerbera. He showed me the photos and regaled me with some amazing stories. It was definitely a road trip I wanted to experience! We hatched a plan to take his Mini Equinox LE to cover the 1,500 miles or so. During the intervening two years, until the 2016 LMC, Scott busily readied the unsuspecting little Mini for its adventure.

It was treated to a Specialist Components fuel injection setup, Piper cam, Duplex timing gear, Gaz adjustable dampers, a custom stainless steel exhaust and modern creature comforts were fitted such as a USB port and a couple of high-powered fans for those times that we might get caught in traffic during the height of the French summer.

Along the way we also managed to recruit a couple of our friends, Gavin and Alex, who were more than up for the challenge too. There was a slight snag: they didn’t have a road going Mini to add to the convoy. Not to worry, Alex runs his own business maintaining and restoring all manner of cars and happened to a have a couple of projects lying around. The time constraints of running your own business, as well as a family life, leave very little time for personal projects. After a couple of busy periods working on the two projects, and realising time was running short, an alternative plan was hatched. A Volcano Orange MPi Cooper was found which needed very little attention to make it road worthy.

Unfortunately, Alex’s perfectionism took hold and the little Cooper ended up with lots of new panels and a full respray. Always one to cut things close, he completed the Cooper at 4.30am the day we were set to leave for France! We had arranged to leave around 6.30am and this was the first time the Cooper had been on the road in 10 years. Talk about having faith!