1959' MINI Morris Mini Minor

918 GFC was one of the very early press cars, loaned to John Bolster of Autosport by BMC to road test it for 1 year. He raced it in the journalists race at Goodwood in 1960 plus several other well known 850 GFC Press Car journalist races. The car was taken abroad a number of times to race for auto-sport journalism, covering some 10,000 miles.
Even before the year of testing was up John Bolster had bought the car off BMC for his own personal use and eventually used it to follow the Monte Carlo Rally.
After 10,000 miles the magnesium gearbox which had caused the engine to cease was replaced. It had an SPQR gear remote fitted and it had a wood rimmed steering wheel fitted. It also had a demister in the rear parcel shelf fitted all these were done around 1960.
There are quite a few differences on this car, which you wouldn’t see normally on a 59 car. One of the things is the back seat and on the front panel, on the top of the slam panel, there are no square indentations which are normally on them. There are a lot more, the body number is 155, chassis number is 1290, the car could be earlier than what the chassis number states as it is well known some cars went through the system twice and that this car was in the workshops being experimented on and actually in the launch of the 59 cars. John Bolster wanted a clipper blue car but if you look at the chassis number, it would probably say that it was too late to be in the launch, however John and his family said it definitely was in the launch. There are signs of the car being a left-hand drive car but all the time that John had it, it was a right-hand drive. This is a bit of a mystery about the left-hand drive bit. It has the original shell and all the parts, which you see, are correct.
After many years John Bolster sold it to Dave Boswell who completely restored it, he rebuilt the engine and gearbox and funnily enough all the gears were absolutely perfect.

The nice thing about the car is that it still has the original number plates, suspension, interior trim, the longer corner bumper’s front and back and the wood rim steering wheel that was made by Walsall Wheels.
This car was used in the Mini sound proofing advert plus features and adverts in Auto Sport 1959 – 1960. It has also featured in James Ruppert’s MINI book
The car comes with a British Motor Industry Heritage Certificate