When John was in his early twenties, he bought a brand new 1275 GT and absolutely loved it. John soon became married and had children and unfortunately the Mini had to go. Fast forward a few years (we won’t say how many) John decided that he would look out for a 1275 GT to rekindle the memories of his youth and stumbled across this early 1971 example.

When the project arrived with us, we noticed something incredibly unusual, there was hardly any rust! It took some while for us to digest what we were seeing before our very own eyes but indeed, we had a mini Infront of us that required very little body work. We immediately dispatched the body shell and panels away to be dipped and coated in zinc epoxy and when it returned to us, we were still amazed at how little the body shell required to restore it!

The restoration continued apace with most of the body work repairs being at the front end of the car. Both outer wings, the front panel, door steps and outer sills were all that needed to be replaced. A couple of repairs to the flitch panels and the rear valance at the rear and we were done! The body was subjected to the usual sealing up and the application of Raptor on the underside before the body was sent away for painting.

Again, whilst the body was at the paint shop, we set about restoring the subframes and the components from these and rebuilding the engine and gearbox all done ready in time for the return of the body shell. One of the hardest tasks was to make good the five 10” Rostyle steel wheel rims which were all cosmetically damaged. This took quite some time but the end result was very pleasing for us.

On the re-assembly a whole new GT interior was sourced from Newton Commercial and fitted by Adrian from A F Trim, Sandbach. One modification to be asked for by John was to have a reclining driver’s seat. This would have been an optional extra in 1971 so we had to adapt the existing fixed frame with parts from a later frame to make it recline.