Featured Ride
Mini Titan
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Well we finally found ourselves our first Featured Ride. The owner, C.T. (aka minititan on the Klassicks Forums), was kind enough to let us show off his beatiful car. It's a 1973 Austin Mini. This small front-wheel drive car is a classic in and of itself, and has a very devoted following all over the world. But C.T. wasn't content on keeping it in it's factory form. He wanted more out of the looks and especially performance from the Mini. As you can see, he's done an extensive amount of work to the car, inside and out. The work he's done is very clean and tasteful. |
Let's start off with the what he's done to the exterior of the car. If you know what a stock Mini looks like, you'll notice that C.T.'s looks a little wider. That's because of the Sport Pack fender flares hovering over the wide wheels. On the front of the car, you'll notice the 4 big fog lights sitting in front of the grill. The one piece front end by Minitec folds up towards the windshield to reveal the power that's running the front wheels. (but we'll get to that part later) On nice sunny days, he can slide back the Webasto full length electric ragtop to catch some rays. The suspension and brakes weren't left out when C.T. was putting everything together. There's a Tilton brake kit with Outlaw 6 pot calipers with 9" rotors and stainless lines. The front and rear suspension by Minitec is fully adjustable. The wheels are 13" x 7" Minilite alloys surrounded by Yokahama AO32R R compound tires. |
 
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The interior of this "Giant" deserves some attention as well. Minitec components, from the air conditioning, to the custom dash are prevalent inside. Acura Integra GSR bucket seats are in the front, along with the stock rear seats in the back were all recovered. The Auto Meter phantom gauges (tach, speedo, A/F, fuel level, oil pressure, alt, water temp) keeps you aware of how healthy the engine is. A Pioneer CD player, 6 x 9 speakers, and an MTX amp lets you clearly hear your favorite tunes while racing up and down the local canyons. And finally, the Momo steering wheel and shift knob keeps you in control of where and how fast you want this beast to go. |
By now you're probably wondering what powers this piece of art on wheels. Because of the front-drive setup of the Mini, it would be a lot easier to get an engine that was also made for front-drive cars. C.T. chose the B18C which was the engine from a 1995 Acura Integra GSR. Now this engine alone, can give you a good amount of power for such a light car at 1700 lbs. But it doesn't stop there. Although the bottem end is stock, the head has been hot tanked and decked .015, the stock cams were replaced with Eagle cams, there's a B&M fuel pressure regulator, Skunk2 intake manifold, stainless steel headers, 9lb chromoly flywheel, ACT SS clutch, lightened aluminum crank pulley, MSD plug wires, 2 1/2" custom exhaust, GSR transmission with an LS fifth gear and limited slip differential, and Hondata S100 p28 computer. The car was dyno tuned at Balanced Performance and was rated at 165 wheel horsepower, with 193 hp at the crank. C.T. said he's never taken this car to the track to get an official 1/4 mile timeslip, but you don't need one to figure out that this Mini performs like a Titan on the streets! |
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