The Jimny Diaries
Life with a diminutive off-roader caught on camera.
The Jimny Diaries
What initially started out as plans for a video series, have interestingly morphed into the Jimny joining the classic fleet at Classic Car Weekly. In it’s span as a fleet it’s bombed down to Le Mans, trekked up to Ben Nevis and shouldered the burden of being a daily driver. The car that properly taught me to love cars. It’s still going and still pressed into regular service as a delivery van, taxi, mile-muncher, off-roader, office and sometimes, camper. It was also replaced for a week by a version of itself in Corfu. But we’ll get to that
A Busy Summer
I try and avoid mentioning the Jimny too much on these hallowed pages as its nature as a proto-classic can be a little divisive. But as a modern classic or to purloin the phrase from our sister title, a Practical Classic, it’s served me incredibly well over a busy summer and is well worth some written praise at this point.
The biggest job that the car tackled was a shopping trip. It’s no secret that in March I drove my MG into a river and then set about sourcing a new engine for it. The end result of this saw me finding a replacement unit down in Cornwall. Which wouldn’t be an issue if I lived vaguely close to the county, but I don’t. Instead, I loaded up the plucky truck with my toolbox, a flask of coffee and hit the road at 5am, listening to Ant Anstead’s Cops and Robbers, well worth a read. The run down to Cornwall saw me well along the M4 before 9am and deep into Cornwall by midday. Loading the engine into the back of the Jimny was a straightforward affair. The unit was still slung from the engine crane used to pluck it from the donor car. So, with the arm pumped right up, I backed the car up with the rear door open and a crate for it held, ready to scoop it up.
Fully laden with engine and beer
Pay no attention to how squatted the rear suspension is, just admire the Cornish vista
In a strange ballet of manhandling and shoving, the engine was soon plopped into the box and slid back into car on the folded-down rear seats. With my overnight bag and toolbox packed in around it, I lashed the lot down and set off for a petrol station to brim the tank once more. On the empty run down the little 1.3 inline four had proven to be quite thirsty, despite having filled it with premium, 32.12mpg. Yes, I’m the sad sort of fella who works that out and keeps a spreadsheet. Now loaded down and squatting heavily, I set off north once more, my stomach rumbling for some sort of lunch, a local pasty maybe. A coastal schlep provided me with the desired sustenance and a stop at the nearby Sharps brewery, a prime chance to stock up on their ales. “You take that east of Cornwall, that’s bootlegging” I thought to myself in a reproduction of a lower-stakes and lower-speed Smokey and the Bandit. Mercifully, I wasn’t chased by the local constabulary all the way home.
My run back northeast wasn’t set for home, instead, it was for Bicester and the next day’s HERO Challenge 2 rally. So, en route, I swung via Somerset to pick up my navigator for the event, and together, we ploughed on to the M4, now burgeoning with Friday rush hour traffic, something that
Posing with an automotive celebrity, the Smith and Sniff Eagle Quest.
Milestone snapped by passenger
wouldn’t be helped by the incoming storm. As the traffic cleared, the rain and hail thundered down. The M4 was soaked in the deluge and the visibility was reduced to mere feet, though I will say, I was grateful for the additional ballast in the Jimny, pressing the rear tyres into the road that much better. By the time I finally made it home post-rally, the Jimny had covered some 631 miles without putting a foot wrong. I hoiked the engine from the back with the forklift and let the rear suspension breathe a sigh of relief.
It wasn’t over there though. After a flat-out Friday down and up the country, it was stoked back into action on the following Monday to go up and down the country, acting as a mobile workstation at RAF Elvington to watch the Flying
Kestrel team bed in their latest round of upgrades in a bid to get their 1939 Riley Kestrel to hit 200mph. Up and down the A1, the car again thrummed away, far more parsimoniously this time, returning 39.49 mpg, not bad for something with the aerodynamic properties of a chest freezer.
July thankfully tapered off much of the car’s charging about the country with just a wedding and the Goodwood Festival of Speed to tackle. All in, I covered some 3500 miles in those two months and it never missed a beat, though that’s not to say it’s devoid of character and charm, I maintain that the Jimny will be a standout classic in its own right, in due course, though a little more Festival of the Unexceptional than Concours of Elegance. Its service is due soon, as is its next adventure, I’ll keep you posted dear reader. For now, the MG still needs work!
Originally Published in Classic Car Weekly - 22nd January 2025