I can’t believe you’ve attained the ripe old age of er… 30 something? and only just performed this spot of DIY. It’s the stuff of spotty 17 year olds with their first mini, shurely?

Omally’s comment to yesterday’s blog opened a floodgate of memories for me. Too much to write in a comment.

Generally, throughout my mini ownership, I’ve done it the Issigonis style. Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the mini, believed that drivers shouldn’t listen to the radio while driving, as it was a dangerous distraction. Hence when designing the mini, he didn’t include anywhere for a stereo to go - or more accurately a mono as they weren’t known in those days. If you do fit one, it tends to hang under the passenger parcel shelf, and you know those cuts I received while fitting mine? Your passenger receives those every time they get in or out of the car. Or when you go over a bump.

I’ve actually been known to remove a stereo from a mini which was present when purchased. There’s not a great deal of point in their being present because you can’t hear them over the noise of the engine, the whine of the gearbox and the road noise from the tiny 10″ wheels.

All my non-mini cars had perfectly adequate stereos, and I always had a few tapes until the great optimisation of my life a couple of years ago. So I have never found myself fitting a stereo.

Or have I?

<wibbly wobbly wibbly wobbly>

My first car was Nobby the mini pickup.

What a fantastic car that was. I’d seen him driving around Loughborough when I was out with mates, and each time I saw him I said “One day that will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine.” He turned up for sale in the paper, £350 what a bargain, and the deal was done on the spot. I had to drive home in the daytime due to having no headlights, and made hand-signals on all the junctions - which was made rather difficult by the tiny sliding windows.

But oh how I loved Nobby. There was no fuel gauge - that was considered a luxury item on commercial minis at the time, so I had to dipstick the fuel tank occasionally. Slightly more occasionally I got it wrong and had to make a short walk with a plastic can before running the battery down trying to start him on the dregs of the tank.

But anyway… what of this stereo? Yes, I fitted a stereo to Nobby along with air-horns on the roof, and spotlights across the grille which could be run for about 15 seconds before the fuse went up in smoke. You know, all the things a teenager does to their pride and joy.

The stereo I fitted was something like this…

I can’t remember the make, but it wasn’t terribly expensive. It was one which could run on mains or about 5-million D-cell batteries. It also had a 12-volt feed. Aha! thought I, and got hold of a couple of metal straps and bolted the hifi to the pickup bed (which was covered, so had a low risk of dampness/theft). Then the power line and speaker wires were routed through to the cab, with a switch on the dashboard to turn the stereo on and off.

I had essentially invented the boot-based CD changer, except you could only listen to one CD which jumped, or a tape, or the radio. And had to choose what you were going to listen to before setting out on your journey. And the radio didn’t really work because the antenna was inside the car. And you couldn’t adjust the volume (but at that age the only volume I needed was really loud). But it did me very well for the ride down to Glastonbury via Southend and back home.

So that is the time I fitted a stereo to a car.