At the end of September Espe and I went over to Castle Combe circuit to watch the Mini World Action day where hundreds of UK minis come together to be thrashed around the west country circuit.

It was an entertaining day watching various Minis being hurled around the track, with interesting consequences at the chicanes. The somewhat sick noises of bike engined and massively high boost turbos was incredible. Of further fascination in and around the paddock, for me at least, was seeing the impressive engineering feats of shoe horning big engines into very small cars.

Given how, since the Nurburgring trip, my thoughts have been occupied by my intended Mini project I felt that I couldn’t miss the opportunity to pop over to Castle Comb, see such cars and speak to the owners and builders. It is more than a small ambition to build a rather special Mini. There are various kits out there and the weeks leading up to the trip I was down to a choice of two. The Pro-Motive one that fits a Yamaha R1 engine into the front of the Mini or the Z-Cars Honda Type R lump which squeezes into the back.

There are various pros and cons for both kits which I will refrain from boring you with here, but in short the decision is a hard one based on cost, drive-ability and retaining the original Mini feeling. At the beginning of the month I’d pretty much set my mind on the Pro-Motive R1 kit, but speaking to Anthony the previous weekend, a keen biker, he’d pointed out the rev thirsty nature of bike engines would make the car not particularly suited to road driving. The lack of a reverse gear is also rather impractical. The Z-Cars kit is better in that respect, but you loose the rear seat’s and have a rather unmanageable oversteery beast that, as we saw on one of the corners, will spin out rather rapidly if you’ve got a heavy right foot. But with about a 4 second 0-60 time we are talking supercar performance here. So much for not boring you with the details…

Anyway, enthused by the multiple cars on display, I’m now even less sure which to go for (in fact some of the quickest, best handling cars out there were original a-series powered). Not too much of a dilemma right now though, as any such toy is financially out of reach right now. What was most disheartening about the day however was the realisation that, by seeing these cars and their owners, such a toy / project takes over your life in terms of time and money (take the blue Z-Cars Honda vtec pictured above for example… I’ve just read in MiniWorld that this particular car cost over £40,000 to build!). I’ve been there before with my MG, and although I wouldn’t change it for the world, I’m not sure I could go down that route again…