slide wrote:
No one I knew ever drove them "sensibly". The Cooper S was a hot rod that would outrun almost anything, and in the wet even better. The MGB and EH Holden boys were left for dead. Things only really started to change towards the end of the '60s when the first mass V8s came along, then the XU1s and the fast Japanese cars started arriving.
When I had my first Mini, a fellow apprentice had a 997 Cooper with every possible Special Tuning bit you could get...the straight cut box on the road made the music very loud...he was a motorsport fan, as was I, but everywhere he drove he would be changing somewhere between max torque and max HP and ALWAYS trying to be as smooth as a baby's bum...on the twisty bits he would go for it...but we were not HOONS.
Hoons had lowered Holdens, tramp-rodded, chrome reverse rims with chrome nuts, twin Stromberg's, 1/2 or 3/4 race cam, lukey sports mufflers, flash paint (usually Electric Blue) and maybe racing stripes and an optional fox tail. Hoons just wanted to be flash as a rat with a gold tooth, make lots of noise and draw attention to themselves
