MiniWorld June 2019 35
up for it.” The unforeseen bodywork
repairs took nine months to complete.
“In terms of the bodywork we chose
to remove the inner wings because we
were developing the right-hand-drive
conversion so we wanted more flexibility
to manoeuvre things but, in future, we
would keep the inner wings and ease
them open to get the subframe in.
Rather than pushing it with a ram or
something we’d actually cut the arch
out and move it back 10mm either
side, to try and make it look standard,
because the idea is that the conversion
F
ans of heavily modified Minis will
be well aware of Z Cars. The Hull-
based company took Minis, mated
them to a tubular chassis and
fitted non-A-series car and motorbike
engines, such as the Honda 16-valve
VTEC and Suzuki Hayabusa engines.
They provided customers with extreme
performance Minis which, invariably,
looked wild and were available through a
drive-in, drive-out service or in kit form.
In late 2015, the rights to Z Cars were
bought by David Rose. Having owned
performance-tuned Minis for many years,
he had been a customer of Z Cars. In fact
MiniWorld featured his Z Cars Mini in our
December 2015 issue. As a businessman
involved with automotive companies, he
was keen to keep the Z Cars name alive
so snapped it up when given the chance.
To build up Z Cars for himself, in
its new location of Ashford, in Kent,
David had a number of plans, including
enhancing the tubular chassis to make it
more user-friendly for customers opting
to build a car themselves. A new engine
cradle system has been developed which
is built into the structure, enabling a
choice of engines to be fitted, worked
on, removed and re-fitted with ease.
Furthermore David planned for the
rebooted company to broaden its
offerings beyond just the established
lightweight, raw, track-focused cars.
“With a choice of engines currently in
production we can offer conversions
with more refinement that are even
suitable for everyday use.” He is also
selling kits for another automotive
icon; the Fiat 500. “I am hopeful, the
FWD Mini and the Fiats will bring us
new customers who would not have
considered a Z Car conversion before.”
The engine of choice for their FWD
conversion is the 1.0-litre Ford EcoBoost.
A donor Fiesta was purchased in March
2016, yet 18 months later, nothing had
progressed on the EcoBoost design with
the Fiat kits and the modular Mini engine
cradle system taking longer to develop
than anticipated. During that time Z Cars
had been collaborating with another Z
Car enthusiast who owned Gotenman,
an engineering business in Spain, which
in the summer of 2017 had started
to build a FWD EcoBoost conversion
for customers. However, the kit was
developed primarily for left-hand drive
and required homologation to comply
with the Spanish regulations which are
more stringent than the UK's. Rather than
develop their own, and given Gotenman
had a CAD-designed innovative solution
with a nearly finished demo car, Z Cars
secured the rights to market it in the
UK and sourced a donor Mk2 Mini from
Spain to adapt the LHD version to RHD.
MiniWorld first saw the Gotenman
Mini at the 2018 IMM in Portugal. Being
essentially an engine conversion for left-
hand-drive Minis, which requires minimal
invasive work on the bodyshell, David
felt it would appeal to UK Mini owners
who wanted a non-A-series Mini but
were less keen radically to change their
Mini than traditional Z Cars customers.
David sourced a Mini from Spain. “It’s
a Mini that was built at the AUTHI plant
in Spain. It’s a Mk2 and we’ve obviously
changed the rear lights and put the Mk1
paraphernalia on the front. We brought
it back as a painted shell on a trailer. The
kit and the engine were in the van. The
idea was that we would put the engine
in and make it right-hand drive. It was
all painted yet we found that we had to
change the sills and put a new floor in it.
In the end we took it apart and rebuilt
it and then put the engine in. “We are
sticklers for that – we don’t put any of
the Z cars stuff in to a shell that’s not »
David Rose of Z Cars.
Z Cars has revamped
its kit for mid-engined
Minis at its impressive
premises in Ashford.