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Super-Cooper?

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I talked with a fellow at a party recently who told me he once drove what he called a "Mini Super Cooper". He said it had a Climax engine mounted in the rear (!) and the front was converted to a trunk/boot. He also said that about a dozen were built.

I've heard about the twin-engined Mini's but never one like this, and would discount the story as a faulty memory except that he's had a lot of experience with cars, having raced an MGA Twin-Cam years ago and even driven for a Ferrari dealer a few times in the UK.

Has anybody ever heard of a Climax engined Mini?
 
John, you never ask the easy ones do you? I have never heard of this, however, I have a hypothetical scenario for you.......During the eighties, BL produced the Mini Metro, supposedly as a replacement for the Mini. This never happened, and it was produced alongside the Mini, the name being altered to 'Metro'. With me so far? The Metro 6R4 was a rally-car built and homologated to compete in the World Rally Championship, just before they changed the rules outlawing such cars. It wasn't a Climax engine, but it was "rear"-mounted, or mid-engined to be exact, and all-wheel-drive. Could this be a case of mistaken identity? Or more interesting, an anonymous test mule for the 6R4? Otherwise, how come no-one has heard of any of these "super-coopers"? It has to be something like I outlined above.

And to please Abba fans, "And like a super cooper......"
pukeface.gif
 
I think that Nial has got the answer. There were a number of people who thought that the Imp was superior to the Mini, and the engine was, now I come to think of it, a Climax unit to all intents and purposes. Makes sense to me.
 
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by aeronca65t:
...My guess is that your friend is confusing a Mini with a Sunbeam/Hillman Imp. <hr></blockquote>

Very good suggestion. I'll try to pin him down on it next time I see him. I think he said he got out of racing in '63 which makes a souped-up Imp unlikely but memories [his & mine] fade after a while.

Re Gary Cooper - cooincidence he should be mentioned. A fellow recently sent me a VHS tape (copied from 8mm movie film) of some Thompson (CT) races from '53 or '54 and Gary Cooper is in a lot of the shots. I forget what he drove, though.
 
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