As I am now a Mini Spares sponsored driver one of the things I have been asked to do is a regular blog about some of my many memories and racing exploits from the past and future involving the classic Mini we all love, so here is my first.

The original race car in 1979

My first blog to the Mini Spares centre is my first love story, don't stop reading just yet !! It's about a classic Mini. It was the end of 1978 when I was a very poor 17 year old racing in the Mini 7 Championship in the 850cc seven class, my older brother Chris Lewis also a classic mini racer, who at the time was working a good job and he was good at getting sponsorship something I have learnt to perfect over the years myself, was about to start racing in the Leyland 1275 GT Challenge against the likes of Soper, Watts, Hampshire, Taft, and Harris all great drivers who are synonymous with the Mini and Soper who was to become a racing legend.

Chris bought a brand new 1979 1275 GT from our local leyland dealer in Yorkshire and a kit of parts from the long gone special tuning department of Leyland in Abingdon Oxfordshire and he and I set about building up this race car.

He had managed through his work in the frozen food industry to get sponsorship from the Canadian food giant McCain who had a brand new invention for that year the Oven Chip seems funny now but in 1979 it was a very new concept to put your chips in the oven.

The car once built up had a brand new Steve Harris tuned engine in it giving about 100 BHP at the wheels and looked the mutts nuts in its bright yellow colour and the new McCain Oven Chips logos all over it.

As the 1275 Mini Challenge and the Mini 7 Championship were all organised by the Mini 7 club when I was not racing in the 7 I would be helping Chris with his GT.

Many happy weekends were spent running the car and Chris got the odd good result but never a win, as to be honest he is not as fast as me as a driver and I don't mean to be big headed but he is the one in the family with brains and I was always the mad nutcase of the bunch who would try to win or die in my early years.

But the fact that I knew the car was good and fast and that coupled with the fact that Chris could not seem to win in it always nagged at me, I begged him to let me have a go in the car but he never did.

So over 34 years too late and with the Championship long gone I finally got my hands on his 1275 GT car (well almost) In my mind it's the one car that got away from me and to this day has niggled at me in my mind so I have been looking for the car for many years, only to find out it was destroyed a few year after Chris sold it.
So there was no more I could do (or was there) I kept trawling Ebay all the time looking for a mint white as this was the colour when we bought it brand new (genuine 1275 GT), it sounds silly to you reading this but for me the car if I am going to have a replica must be as exact as I can make it.

The car being crashed in 1980
The Oven Chips logo and the black wheels

Clubmen Minis are getting very rare now and commanding strong money, only a few good ones survive now days and finding a good doner car was to prove harder than I thought especially with my fussy head and I was beginning to think I would not find what I wanted.

One night after a few too many whiskeys I found the very car I wanted in bits but mint, I did the usual and bought the car over the net without even viewing it as from the pictures I new it was what I wanted and also would be sold no problem if I did not hit the 'Buy It Now' button.

I hooked up my trailer behind my van and set off to Birmingham to see just what I had got myself into.  Once I got to the post code given to me I found a disused factory at the back of the Birmingham airport, with all CCTV about the place I waited for the lady to arrive, she explained that the car I was about to see had been her ex husbands and he was going to restore it one day but never got round to it and it had sat in a lock up garage for many years.

Once she opened the door at the back all covered in dust and crap was my 34 year dream car, a genuine 1979 Leyland 1275 GT Mini in white and solid, no rot whatsoever, the perfect donor race car for my project.

The lady selling it tried to be a bit tricky with me and said I had only bought the shell and none of the rest of the car but after a few stern Yorkshire words from me she realised she was not going to hood wink me out of any more than the BIN price I had agreed to pay and I loaded the car up, (see picture).

I drove it home as fast as I could as I new I had found a gem and at a great price the V5 all checked out and all the numbers matched, she had the standard engine all original and nothing had been messed with, it was meant to be.

The new doner car as I collected it from Birmingham

Once home I started to need some help as I had an ex wife who decided to burn all my belongings in the late 80's and that included all my photos from the 70;s and early 80;s so I contacted Jeffrey Parrish of the Mini7 club and good as his word some great pictures of the McCain car came through and I had what was left of my memory to help with the build.

I decided not to rush as the car needs to be right and I managed to get a full set of the original 1275 Gt Challenge rules that we had used to build the car 34 years ago, after reading them I realised I would have to make some changes as in 34 years the RAC MSA has made quite an advance in safety and as I want to take the car on track as well as the odd classic Mini race she needs to comply with the rules as they are now for scrutinising.
Even though the car was complete there was still many parts that needed replacing and I have to say that this web site Minispares.com is a life saver as you can sit and usually find what you are looking for, I have spent a small fortune on here way more than the wife knows about haha but its worth it as the car needs to be right and safe.

I spoke with Steve Harris about an engine but as I use Paul Inch engineering in Plymouth for my Mighty's engine and the fact that Paul's Dad Chris raced in the 1275 GT Challenge it seemed appropriate that Paul should do the engine to the Challenge spec.

I have kept buying odd parts from Ebay and Mini Spares as well as nagging all my old friends in racing for the NOS things you just cannot get any more, I got a genuine Challenge Weber inlet manifold from Nick Swift of Swiftune who had one in his loft!! And Neil Slarke supplied one of his Dad's old style big valve inclined heads just what we had on it in 1979.

The hardest part to find was the original GKN Silverstone wheels, my old mate Richard Longman has 2 sets for his 1275 Historic Touring cars but he wont let them go, I had placed ads on all the classic Mini sites and nothing, they are so rare that the last set made silly money, I was beginning to think I would have to use a set of the Unipart wheels that look very similar, but they weren't the GKN's.

I kept updating my Facebook account with how the build was going when I was contacted by a chap from Norway who said he had a set of GKN's and as I was doing a Clubman he thought I may want to buy them, damn right I did, I got the 4 wheels sent over from Norway and they were in very good condition, so I had them crack tested then blasted and powder-coated black as in 1980 we had black wheels and thats what I think looked the best.

The car is stripped and prepped for paint
The yellow was matched from the few remaining pictures and my head

I have been working on the car on and off over this last winter, I still have quite a few jobs to do to get it ready for its first public appearance at the Brands Hatch Mini festival in June, but she will be there and running. I have promised it to a Mini club to take pride of place on their stand, I wont drive her at Brands as I am already in 5 races over the weekend 2 Mighty and 2 Super Mighty then in Paul Inches new Historic Touring car Cooper S so a bit to busy to have a run in her, but I want her first track day to be at Silverstone as it seems to be the most appropriate track to do it on as we raced there so much on 79 and 80.

The attached pictures show some of the build and the stripping of the car, this was a very important thing to me as now days it would just be vinyl and I did not want that so I got my old mate Brian Evans who is one of the best airbrush sign writers in the UK to come and do the stripes and the Paul Inch Engines logo on the bonnet so she had some tie in with the past, then my mate Ray Sturman of RGS Signs who does all my cars and vans did the rest, I hope you can see the love and attention I have been putting into the car from the pictures and when you see it at a track or a show come up and say hi and have a good look at the car as it's so damn correct it's as near to a time machine as you can get.

One last thing a few people that know me have said "is it a tribute to Chris", I thought about it and no it's not, it's a car I wanted to drive so much as a 17/18 year old boy with no money that once I could afford it and had the time I built it, only 34 years to bloody late, "o well never mind I love it and hope you all do to.

Jonathan Lewis

The great Brian Evans doing his thing

The car interior build, all the fiddly jobs

Ray and I had to re manufacture all the Challenge logos using old pictures, I think we did a great job, here is Ray doing the car

She is rolled outside for the first time, this was a very moving thing for me at the time as I took me back in time 34 years. I hope you like it

The very very rare GKN wheels

She is complete in all her 1980's glory, with all remanufactured Leyland racing challenge logos thanks to RGS Signs

In black and white it shows how close we have come to the original mini

the Leyland Challenge logo from 1980/2013 you were sent one after a win, Chris never won a round but I won 4 in Mini 7 so we decided we would put them on the car that deserved them...