Running concurrently with the restoration of Jack’s Cooper Sport 500 was Jan’s Cooper Sport 500 which was a good comparison to have here on site. Jan’s Cooper Sport was built in September 2000, is number 476/500 and it was bought new by Jan in May 2001.

By early 2019, Jan realised that his Mini was in need of some major attention and commissioned us to carry out a full restoration of the car.

We set about stripping down the Mini and it was soon clear that we would be replacing the majority of the panels if we were to properly future-proof the Mini. Indeed, once stripped down we were only left with the roof, rear seat bulkhead, A & B Pillars and the front bulkhead. The restoration took pace and all the panels were replaced, zinc epoxy primed and the underside coated in Raptor when the outbreak of COVID19 put a grinding halt to the project.

Fortunately, Jan wanted to partake in the project and we had boxed up many of the parts we had removed on the strip down and sent them to him to restore and clean. This kept Jan busy throughout the pandemic when he effectively turned his garage at home into a small restoration workshop!

Upon returning to work later in 2020 we dispatched the body shell to the paint shop to be refinished in the pearlescent version of British Racing Green with a silver roof.

The Engine and Gearbox had been stripped and overhauled before the outbreak of COVID and this was now ready to be painted and installed into the newly refurbished subframe. The Rear Subframe was prepared and built up just in time for the arrival of the body shell back from the paint shop.

The re-assembly took place using a mixture of new and restored cleaned parts which Jan had made a very good job of doing at home and the end result was a very pleasing one indeed.