James May Bought a Very Special Mini Cooper

The classic Mini had a very long 41-year production run. Amazingly, only half those years included the perpetually fun Mini Cooper, festooned with decals and various upgrades that set it apart from other trims. The Cooper was dropped after 1971 but made a comeback in 1990 to usher out the final 10 years of Mini production.

You can thank the Mini Cooper featured in this new James May video for that. It’s one of three prototypes built in the late 1980s to herald the Cooper’s return. Moreover, it’s the only one still known to exist. So of course, May uses it to go buy some of his own gin.

We’ll give the former Top Gear and The Grand Tour host some credit. Showcasing a very special Mini Cooper prototype in a video on his gin-focused YouTube channel is inspired marketing. But it’s also properly informative—May explains the history of the car and how Rover used it to promote the rebirth of the Cooper. It started life as a standard Mini 30 on the assembly line and was upgraded to Cooper status, with the larger 1.3-liter engine, cool wheels, stickers, you know the drill. Alongside the other two prototypes, it did press-related duties to get buyers excited about the Cooper’s return.

It is, however, a prototype. That means not everything is production-quality, as May showcases in the video. There are some notable panel gaps in places, and the finish is a bit rough. He actually pulled some of the trim off simply drying it after a car wash. Later in the video, it stalls out while he’s giving us a condensed road test review. But if we’re honest, that’s generally a Mini thing anyway.

Being a very rare prototype, it’s hardly done any mileage. May bought it with just under 1,000 miles on the odometer, but he’s not letting it sit in a garage. There are over 1,200 miles as of the video, some of which came courtesy of a shopping trip to buy—wait for it—a bottle of James Gin. See? Inspired marketing.

Regardless of what you drink, it’s nice to see such an important piece of Mini history not just in the spotlight, but being enjoyed by a proper enthusiast. Well done, sir.