The disappearance of John Lennon's Mini remains a great enigma. I wrote about it years ago, and judging by the number of clicks it keeps on receiving the article remains a Maximum Mini favourite (see it here).
All we knew for sure was that Lennon's Mini was a Radford De Ville, based on a 1965 Austin Mini Cooper 'S', registered LGF 696D and painted black. But now it seems that even that must be reconsidered. Keith Hawkins dropped me a line with two images attached, taken from film footage shot by John and Yoko themselves at John’s home ‘Kenwood’ in Weybridge, Surrey in 1968. This was done for a film project named 'Look at Me', which was recently remastered and published. Keith wrote: "Hi Jeroen, here they are, taken around 1968 I would think. Lovely colours, Lennon had great taste, regards Keith."
That surely must be John Lennon's Mini. But it's painted green and cream here, with golden Cosmic wheels like George Harrison's. What's more: it's clear now that the car came with the Aston Martin DB5 rear light units as Paul McCartney's Mini had them too, and with a hatchback door as Ringo Starr's! The best of all combined into one vehicle..?
There are a lot of Mini based three-wheelers coming out of the woodwork and I'll share them with you this week. The kick-off is provided by Scotsman and historic racer Ewen Sergison, who shared the lovely story of his dad's Special, which he found back just a couple of days ago. He wrote:
"In 1976 my dad wanted out the house as his new born son (me) would not stop crying! He stopped shaving, locked himself in the garage and built and then registered the JS2 (what JS1 was I don’t know unless it was me). Today I bought it back! Most of my cars have girls names but at the moment “IT” is back! V5c still says make: JS, model: JS, chassis number: JS2. My earliest memories were getting splinters in my legs from it’s plywood seat and dad showing me how he could do stoppies in it! Dad my old man invent stoppies? An emotional day to actually drive it! Thanks to Barry and Ray for selling it back to me! Means the world!"
Well done Ewen, hope you will enjoy the JS2 for many years to come!
More recent three-wheeler stories about some great family provenance here and here.
When I heard of a Cox GTM that had been in storage since 1993 in Belgium I had to know more. Two weeks and lots of e-mails later the car is now at my home, parked next to the Le Mans Mini Marcos.
Unlike so many GTMs this really is a Cox with the flat bonnet and the welded 'cow horns' at the back to hold the rear chassis, the later (Heerey) GTMs having a box section there. Oddly it does have the two-part boot lid, which I believe was introduced later, but then this may have been retro-fitted. Somebody, at some point, started a restoration on the car and both the chassis as well as the body have been worked on. The previous owner's dad bought it as you can see it here with the plan to turn it into an autotest car, but it never happened. He did buy a brand new laminated windscreen and Perspex rear screen, which came with the car, as well as the gear linkage mechanism and a few more parts.
Unfortunately there is no registration or further paperwork with it, although I think it may well have been on the road before work started. I hope to find out more about that, but am looking for a new home for this car now. Contact me when you are interested. The ad is here.
UPDATE 29 March: I've added a few pictures of the gear linkage and screens that are included. Also found a bonnet badge and some more stuff. I may be tempted to add that with the car, too!
UPDATE 6 April: The car is now sold to a highly valued reader of Maximum Mini in the UK.
