Published on 2026-07-03
The story of buying a rusted classic Mini with zero mechanical experience — and getting it back on the road a year later.
Written by Sam Hooper
I was 16, I had zero mechanical experience, and I bought a rusted classic Mini that hadn’t run in a decade. In hindsight, that sentence alone should have been a warning sign. At the time it just felt obvious — how hard could it be?
[This is the bit that needs your real story: what state was it actually in when you got it? What was the first thing you tackled, and what did you get completely wrong before you got it right? Was there a moment you thought you’d made a huge mistake? Did anyone help — a parent, a friend, a YouTube rabbit hole at 1am? What’s the one repair or lesson that’s stuck with you since?]
A year later, a week after passing my driving test, it was back on the road — my first car, running under its own power, because I’d decided it would.
Looking back, that’s basically the whole pattern I’ve followed ever since: find something I don’t know how to do, assume that’s not really a reason not to do it, and figure it out by doing it. The Mini was just the first time it happened to be a car instead of a codebase.