Commercial Brake

Transformed from a tired Clubman Estate, Karl Reynold’s Minivan project will push the humble commercial to new, luxurious heights...

- Gerard Hughes

There’s no denying that Karl Reynolds is a petrolhead. He’s owned more than his share of the fast and the exotic over the years, and had long fancied adding a Mini to his garage, but he’d never quite got round to it.

That changed when he bought a ’92 saloon from a friend who was moaning his son had moved to London and not taken it with him. Karl reckons it was a bit of an impulse purchase, and just as many have found before him, sometimes buying the first one you look at is not the best idea. Standard Mini power was never going to keep him happy, so the Mini was treated to a carefully built 1293 with a supercharger bolted on for good measure.

Joe Holloway – friend of Mini Magazine and top body shop man at John Holloway Cars – is a friend of Karl’s and has worked on many of his cars over the years. When Karl brought the saloon in for a bit of pre-MoT work, it was clear that it wasn’t going through the test without a lot of work.

Karl had already experienced Joe’s Minis – including his supercharged Minivan – and it didn’t take much for a new project to be born…

Do you have any Mini ‘history’?

Karl: No, lots of other cars but the ‘92 was the first Mini I’ve ever owned, which was bought on a whim and that was that.

But you have a bit of family history with the Mini?

Karl: Yes, my Grandad had an Estate when I was a kid and we used to go on holiday to Hayling Island. We’d all be sat in the back, me and my brother in the boot with the two Jack Russells. I’ve happy memories of that!

What happened to the 1992 Mini?

Joe: We’d built the engine for it and carried out routine mechanical maintenance. It failed the MoT on a lot of rust. So, we either had to strip and restore the shell or get another one.