Chapter 4: The 15 Years Anniversary Special

Several years later, my parents ended up buying a brand new Mini for my mom. This time it was an anniversary limited model celebrating the 15 years of the Mini, making this then 1974. It was a beautiful black Mini 1000 that proudly carried a numbered badge by the windscreen showing it was part of a limited production. Although it was perhaps not as practical as the Clubman, it was nevertheless another great car.

This is not actually ours, and I am hoping to get some original photos later

After my mom had used the car for a while, it was sold to my sister as her first car. She covered quite a lot of distance in that little car, including a trip around Europe together with her boyfriend. I would never have considered a Mini as a long-distance touring car, but they certainly had no such consideration. This may be because my sister had some experience with long drives in small cars, having travelled together with my dad from Sweden to Lebanon in a Fiat 127 in 1974.

She then ended up selling it on to my oldest brother as his first car, which is when he began making some particular improvements to the car.

At the time he was working for a company in Gothenburg that built amplifiers. These were extremely high end things, producing incredible sound. For his Mini, he then built a very special setup that was installed in a custom built center console. For such a tiny car, the amplifier was a six-way unit providing filtered outputs specifically for the bass, midrange and tweeters. He then converted the space underneath the rear seat to a bass speaker by boarding it off and installing two bass drivers in the space. Two mid-range speakers were glued to the roof of the car, in the middle, and finally two tweeters were installed on a new custom made dashboard.

The result was simply stunning!! Most people will never have a stereo in their home that comes close to that setup, and to find that in such a small space! With the custom made center console in place, and the custom dashboard that housed the tweeters, he built a few other improvements to the interior such as what may be the world’s first cup-holders in a car. For the rest, he left the exterior pretty much stock, focusing really on improving on the interior. It did help provide me with some ideas for the future…

They had a numbered plaque. 200 were made...