Description
This Austin Seven was built on 26th October 1959 and was first registered a month later. It is much travelled! The original owner took the car to Spain in 1976 and then in 1982 he took it to Melbourne, Australia, returning in 1984. (1983 & 1984 Victoria State permits can be seen on the windscreen). He completed over 120, 000 miles in the car. The current owner bought the car in 1988 and carried out extensive restoration as the bodyshell was by then deteriorating badly. Restoration took over ten years. Sadly in Dec 2021 the car was involved in a major accident caused by a lorry driving out of a garage without looking. This necessitated a total rebuild, carried out over 18 months by a company of professional restorers.
The car is standard (i. e. not de-luxe) and has the correct original cloth seats and trim as fitted to early standard minis (now extremely rare!). Although the car has now covered about 134, 000 miles, the engine was fully rebuilt and a new clutch was fitted in 2013, since when it has only covered 8, 000 miles. The chassis number shows that it is the 5403rd Austin Mini built. The car comes with an original RF60 green registration book as well as later registration documents, a BMIH Trust history certificate for the car (dated 1 Dec 1988), a set of 15 circular tax discs from June 2000 to June 2014, 8 MoT certificates from between1987 & 2004, a and a large file of miscellaneous bills etc.
The black and white photo shows the original owner taking YNP700 around Oulton Park in 1960. There is a separate photo of the current owner taking YNP700 in a Mini "cavalcade" around Oulton Park in 2009. I bought this car in 1988 because I had always wanted one of the first minis after their introduction in September 1959. It was particularly nice that this is a "standard" car because they have the extremely rare cloth seats (which were replaced with leather-cloth seats in 1962 due to the fragility of the material. There are probably now only about ten early minis with this fragile trim in the world! It took me over ten years to locate a set of cloth-trimmed seats for this car. It is probably now impossible!
So the new owner will have the joy of owning an almost unique early Mini in good running order.
