[Jase]

Mike,

I've looked through your entire gallery and on more than one ocassion! Your gallery, and others, are whats giving me the inspiration to actually do this. Yeah I could just buy one - but its not going to be exactly as I want it to be. So many people said to me when I was restoring the Mini - for the money you've spent you could have bought a fully restored one and saved yourself the hassle - but then I wouldn't have decided on what colour the car was, nor the colour of the interior, the seatbelts, what type of engine and its specs, carbie and stage kit, air filter, steering wheel, gearbox, coil etc etc.. almost EVERYTHING on the Mini in the end was there because it was what I personally wanted. I would never have found one that I was entirely happy with, and as it turned out, I wasn't entirely happy with it anyway - the engine bay, which I ended up doing only a little bit of work on myself, was nowhere near what I wanted it to be, and nor was the interior.

My experiences with other peoples workmanship is why I want to do the next job myself. When the people who rebuilt the engine were putting it in, they scratched the **** out of the fresh lick of paint in the engine bay. When they put the windscreen in, they scratched the lip underneath - most of it I could have done myself, but I didn't want to wait, so in the end I paid someone what is in reality a ridiculous sum of money to do something poorly.

So I want my cobra to be mine and I want to spend months working on it, making sure every last detail on it is exactly what I want, and that it is done perfectly.

End rant.