Stupid Fast Mini

If this story is about a Fast Mini...

Then why is there an image of a Mustang above?

Well...​

When people talk about “the good old days,” they usually leave out the part where they probably should’ve died.

Not dramatically. Not heroically. Just quietly, stupidly, on some anonymous stretch of tar with the wrong combination of youth, horsepower, alcohol, and confidence. The kind of death that doesn’t make the papers because there’s nothing noble about it. Just physics finally winning an argument.
In the late seventies, we were too young to understand that distinction.

Allow me to tell you a story…

I was on the way back to Joburg during the late seventies in my old man’s pristine Gunston-coloured Mk1 Mustang.

My old tappet had a thing for big Yank Tanks. I always leaned toward small European sports cars - things that rewarded finesse and punished stupidity - but the Mustang was different. It was blunt. Heavy. Overpowered. It didn’t care if you were talented. It only cared if you were bold enough to press the pedal.

And that’s exactly why it was kinda dangerous in the hands of a teenager.

For reasons that had nothing to do with maturity or restraint, the Mustang was a fanny magnet of note. My old man knew it, which is why he tried to attach responsibility to it like a safety tag on a firearm.

Do well in your final year in school - Get the Mustang’s keys for a long weekend.

I did well. Academically anyway.

I was expelled two weeks before final exams for smacking the drunk History teacher in the car park after school when he called me a loser that would never amount to anything in life.

I like to think there was irony there, but mostly there was just rage and bad impulse control.

I wrote my finals at the local cop shop. Alongside Martin, who’d been expelled for shitting in a teacher’s bag.

Naughty bugger. Also deeply unhinged.

We both passed. We got the Mustang. And we immediately set about proving that passing exams and being fit to operate machinery are unrelated skills.

Durban delivered what Durban always delivered in those days: sunburn, booze, sex, and the illusion that nothing bad could happen because nothing bad had yet.

By Sunday afternoon we were wrecked - dehydrated, under-rested, and vibrating with that peculiar bravado that only comes from having survived a weekend you probably shouldn’t have.

That’s when we pointed the Mustang back toward Joburg.
​

​The N3 between Harrismith and Villiers was a mental endurance test back then.

No tolls. No dual lanes. Just long, hypnotic stretches where boredom and fatigue teamed up to make terrible ideas sound reasonable.

Late afternoon was the worst. Sun in your eyes. Muscles heavy. Brain lagging half a second behind your right foot.

I set the Mustang at around 75 mph and zoned out, which in hindsight should’ve been warning enough.

Then came the Mini.

Left Hand Drive. Old. Red. Clapped out but determined. The kind of car that survives on momentum and optimism. He tailgated. I ignored him. I accelerated. He caught up. Downhill, he’d pass. Uphill, he’d die and I’d glide past again.

It was childish. It was pointless. And instead of disengaging like an adult, I decided to escalate like an idiot.

By the fourth or fifth time, irritation had replaced boredom. When he slowed on the incline, I nudged him.

Let’s call it what it was: I pushed another car on a public road.

I justified it to myself immediately.

Big chrome bumpers. American steel. Designed for it. I even made jokes in my head about why Americans built cars that way - as if humour somehow turned recklessness into intention.

He ignored the nudge.

So I pushed him.

Uphill. With a V8. At speed. On a public road. With no thought given to tyres, brakes, or what would happen if either of us sneezed.

I expected fear. Instead, he turned and gave me a thumbs-up.

That should have been the moment I backed off. It wasn’t.

Because here’s the ugliest truth of all: being cheered on by your own stupidity is intoxicating.
At the crest of the hill I floored it. Not to pass. Not to leave. To prove something that didn’t need proving.

110 mph. The Mini went light. Bouncy. Unstable. Through his mirror we could see terror replacing bravado in real time. Martin was goofed - laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

And that’s the part that still doesn’t sit comfortably - not the speed, not the danger - but the laughter.

That’s when sanity kicked in. Not judgement. Not morality. Just plain sanity.

I felt sorry for the guy.

Or maybe I felt the first flicker of consequence brushing past my peripheral vision.

I backed off and passed him, waving as though this had been a friendly exchange instead of a rolling act of lunacy.

The Mini screamed in neutral, Ziiiiiiiinngg, like machinery protesting abuse it never signed up for.

We never saw him again.

He didn’t crash. We didn’t crash. No cops. No ambulances. No phone calls. Just a clean escape from what could’ve been a lesson written in metal and blood.

We laughed all the way home.

I polished the Mini’s red paint off the Mustang’s bumper and returned it without a scratch. My old man was none the wiser.

And that, right there, is the real danger.

Not that we did something stupid - but that nothing happened.

Because when nothing happens, stupidity feels validated.

Years later I bumped into Martin in Pretoria. Became an advocate. Big beer belly. No hair. Respectable on paper. Unrecognisable from his youth.

Martin got a proper education and changed his ways. I didn’t - but retained my youthful look. We joked about it.

We laughed about the Mini story and other idiotic things we’d done when we were young.

________________________
The laughter had changed. It wasn’t pride anymore.
It was disbelief.
Not that we’d done it - but that we were still around to tell it.
​________________________

- Pierre Martins​

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