At the end of the evening, 15 of the 20 replicas were auctioned off, with guests placing sealed bids during the evening, which generated in excess of £20,000 for the Prevent Breast Cancer charity.
The replicas were created by scanning the original car then machined on sister company, Motorsport Advanced Development’s Mazak Variaxis i600 five-axis machining centre, using WNT’s Type W solid carbide Alu-line cutters, with a geometry and tool coatings specifically developed for non-ferrous metals.
Each car measures around 300 x 150 x 150 mm and took around 10 hours to machine, with 20 cars required in total, this was a major commitment of machine and tooling and people.
Says Mini Sport director Daniel Harper: “We wanted to do something special for our 50th anniversary. Replicating one our father’s original competition Minis seemed like the right thing to do. The fact that we could then raise such an amazing amount of money for Prevent Breast Cancer, a charity that is close to our family, made the investment in time worthwhile.”
