hate is a strong emotion. Equally as passionate as love, it can take you to some damaging places – but it also has the potential to steer you, if you’re sufficiently open-minded, in wonderful new directions. “Honestly, I hated the new MINI,” Richard Everitt recalls. “Hated the fact it wasn’t Rover-produced, hated the way the brand had been taken, I had no love for the car at all. However, my mom was given an R53 Cooper S for a few days from MINI; I took the car out for a drive and that was me sold, there and then. The stiff shell, the feel of the suspension, the supercharger singing under the bonnet and the quirky interior meant that a few weeks later I had myself a 2004 JCW.” If only all the haters could have a transcendent drive in one, right? And Richard was coming at this from an interesting perspective. He’s a lifelong petrolhead who cut his teeth on Minis and Metros at an early age, handing his dad spanners in the garage. His first car was a K-series Metro 1.1 that ended up as a GTI lookalike, and the die was cast – every car he’s owned since has been modded and customised to some degree, there have been a bunch of classic Minis woven throughout the fabric of the story, and the current stable is pretty diverse: jostling for space right now are
