Peep. PEEEEEEP!  You heard it here first!  The sounds of a herd of classic mini coopers rolling through  Fort Bragg, on their way to a mountain party!! 

They really can’t pass much on the road, especially a classic burger stand but they are cool to look at.

Fort Bragg was visited by a caravan of classic Mini Coopers last week. I had hoped to get the story up in time for people to see it, but the 10 little fellas went on their way north faster than I could upload the photos.. Mini Coopers from all over the nation, both classic and modern, are at a huge Mini Meet on Mount Hood today, ending tomorrow.

I joked with one of the minicooper “dads” about how I would never fit. He was 6-2 and said the classic ones are way roomier than one would think. I am six foot 8 and 333 lbs and I seldom fit in regular cars, much less something called a Mini Cooper.

He said I could get in, and if I knew how, I could drive it.  MAN, that was the opportunity of a lifetime!!!.  As you can see I got in the Mini Cooper pickup but could not get my legs under the steering wheel.

  The guys driving Mini Coopers through Fort Bragg, with a couple of exceptions were from the SF Mini Cooper Club.  There were none of the modern ones in FB and part of the caravan (or maybe it should be called swarm?) went up 101 and part went up 1. Really 101? Sorry dudes.

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Here is the site for the big Mount Hood Mini Meet

“More than 100 classic Minis, yes, the ones that look like go-karts with attitude, along with modern MINIs, will descend on the mountain for four days of nostalgic horsepower, automotive oddities, and stories as quirky as the cars themselves,” says the website.  They were all originals in Fort Bragg. I took pictures of the Mini Cooper dads at Jenny’s double thrill – A drive in burger stand with a drive-in classic car.

 They seemed to be all dudes.  Do ladies like American steel better?

The Flathead Ford V-8 Club I wrote about a couple of weeks ago was dudes and their gals almost entirely. All in their 70s and 80s and the mini guys a bit younger, but the Ford club, those guys all looked like former quarterback types, and the gals former head cheerleaders.  And those gals preferred Mayan Fusion to Jenny’s, but everybody with a classic car HAS to do Jenny’s, especially the Flatheads.  Check out my story on the Fords. It has part of my own Jeffrey Epstein file in it. No kidding.  Click here for that story.  It was way too much work, but I love it and would do it for free, even if it got 1/25th the readers the crime story I did the same day got. Oh I did do it for free! I forgot! LOL  But this time, I don’t know anything beyond the websites, so Ill let you click.  I do know the mini cooper classics had a silly horn that sounded like a hoarse bobwhite Quail. Some loved them, others joined a fad to give them air horns! This guy put his back original, but the engine had to be upgraded for the long trip.

 I collected and sold classic cars for years, but all American.

Click on the blue to read the best Mini Cooper site

Here is a very cool excerpt from the site above:

“The year was 1957, and in post-World War II England the Suez Crisis had sent fuel prices soaring, leading many to wonder if the large, gas-guzzling vehicles of the day made much sense anymore.

So, Sir Leonard Lord of the Morris Company issued his top engineer, Alec Issigonis, a challenge: design and build a small, fuel-efficient car capable of carrying four adults, within economic reach of just about everyone. As fate would have it, the challenge of fitting so much function into such a small package inspired a couple of historic innovations.

Issigonis created more room in the cockpit by pushing the wheels all the way out to the corners and turning the engine sideways, giving the car more stability on tight turns and more passenger space on the inside. The world had never seen a car quite like it. And when the first MINI launched in 1959, it quickly became the essence of culture.”

Mini Coopers were up against the Volkswagen Bug. The Nash Metropolitan had been made a decade earlier, the first tiny, sexy, excellent gas-mileage American car. For reasons that can only be termed idiotic, American car companies never followed Nash’s lead until the Japanese invasion forced them to, 2-3 decades later.` The Brits had other small cars as did Europe and of course, Japan, whose Honda 600 from 1968 could be picked up and put in the back of a pickup truck.

While the Volksy won the day as the symbol of the more relaxed, more free-thinking and self loving and others-loving too 1960s, the Mini Cooper did have a big win with George Harrison’s beloved Mini. 

That Austin Cooper ‘S’, LGF 695D, was built for George Harrison by Harold Radford (Coachbuilder) Ltd in late 1965 and painted in Metallic Black. In early 1967, the car was repainted and the psychedelic pictures were added using a book, Tantra Art: Its Philosophy and Physics, for inspiration. At the same time Harrison also had the wall of his house painted in the same style, which did not go down very well with his neighbors. Ok, I admit Im just seeing if Tom Yates reads this story and puts me on KOZT’s Sunday morning show, Breakfast with the Beatles.

I have to say,  I fell in love with the Mini Cooper pickup, the guy was going to let me drive had i fit.  I did not fit, I did not get to drive this beauty. Having the story to share would be my prize.

A total of 54,367 Mini pickups were produced in the UK. This number includes both home sales (39,951) and export sales (14,416). He had imported his, and many of the Mini Cooper lovers in the USA will import their cars from the mother country.

And Sorry Folks, my dream is still to get a 1936 Packard again or a 1959 Imperial. John in the harbor has some cool Lincolns too. I fit so nice in all that and those cars are just me. I ain’t a little fella car guy.