I'm over Bike Conversions too. And I hate seeing cars in there which are nothing but a 998-powered sound system. But... At the end of the day, why do we buy these magazines..? Let's get this straight, I buy them, I'm not having a go at their existence, I reckon they're a good thing. But why do we buy them? Probably to give us ideas an inspiration for our own Minis. I figure they put in all the conversions, etc, because people don't want to see a stock Mayfair, 850, Cooper S, and Rover Cooper every issue. "Oh look, here's a different tweed pattern on the seat, this indicates this is a special model, which had this pattern and two decals..."
Out here, it would be similar for Watto - if he just covered the standard cars, even in concourse condition, people would lose interest.
Yes there are hundreds and thousands of combinations of how you can build an A Series engine, from different carbs to cams to internals, but, at the end of the day, if it's a whole car in the magazine, all the photos can really show is the engine bay, and, between clean and dirty, after a while, all but the most die hard fans are going to get tired of it. An A Series sits in a Mini in basically one way! And unless there's something unusual bolted off it (like the SC12 conversion) or some other distinguishing feature (say a KAD/Arden etc head), many people will lose interest. Looking through the spec list, especially for the engine build, can be boring for many people. Many, if not most people don't have an exact appreciation for what it all means - and I reckon I'd be in that batch too. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between two different piston brands (same overbore, etc) sitting in the car. And it wouldn't make much difference to me unless I found mine were slower or would die sooner! And things like brakes? How exciting is it to see yet another Mini with rear drums..?
I'm not meaning to be silly, I'm just pointing out that you could argue "seen one, seen 'em all."
I think any Mini fan can appreciate a concourse original car - they are works of art. But they're not practical for the average person - most people aren't happy with a '60's AM radio or no tunes at all. Witness all the subwoofer questions in the Car Audio section here. Similarly, many people don't want to leave their 850, Deluxe or K with a stock engine and drums (although the level of modification varies from person to person). They want their cars to be practical. So these magazines need to maintain our interest by showing what's possible - even if many don't find it tasteful. Just because someone does something we don't like, doesn't mean we need to do it. But there might be something in their work that we do like, so we can take inspiration from it or copy it for ourselves.
I think, when the MINI made it to 500,000 cars produced, they said that, given all the different options available, the odds of two cars being exactly identical were something like 1:250,000... Classic Minis were often about personalization and identity too...
Otherwise there wouldn't be cars with Union Jacks, Checkers, stripes, Welsh Dragons, white/black roofs etc out there.
Lastly, you guys have forgotten to mention the Vauxhall engine conversions that used to be common in there, too... I have often wondered why we didn't do them out here, given the engines were produced in Melbourne... Guess it just mustn't have been the best (i.e. simplest, cheapest, best bang-for-your-buck) conversion option available here.
