The Independent American Magazine for all Mini Owners
Issue link: http://mc2.epubxp.com/i/33536
Photos by Oscar Revelli I n many respects, this GP, owned by Oscar Revelli, is perhaps the most unusual of all the GPs made because of its history. Oscar, who splits his time between his home in Sarasota, Florida and Turin, Italy had ordered the car back in early 2006, when they were first announced, taking delivery on the 25th of September. It wasn’t long afterwards that he contacted the MC2 offices and told us that he was driving his GP around the world and taking it back to the gates of the now closed Bertone factory in his hometown of Turin before returning the car to Florida. At first, we crossed him off as one of those crazy readers that every magazine seems to collect who have completely hair-brained ideas. However, Oscar is not a nut. Yeah, he’s crazy, all Italians are, but he is a serious and determined fellow and he soon convinced us that his plan was real and asked us to jump on board for support, which we happily did. So some weeks later, Oscar arrived at our door in his GP, on his way to Russia. He’d already driven across the States and after meeting with us and doing some last minute work to his car at Northwest MINI, he was shipping the car by plane to South Korea where he would begin the drive into and across Russia, Europe, and eventually back home to Florida. We highlighted Oscar’s MINI GP World Challenge in Issues 18 and 19 and it garnered a lot of attention. Never one to sit still for long, Oscar has shipped his car back to the city of his and its birth and revamped the GP once again, turning it from a globe circumnavigating touring car into a high performance racecar with Green Goblin Motorsports. To get the car ready for the European racetracks Oscar has stripped out most of the original Bertone-made interior, installed Recaro racing seats, a full roll cage and a straight- 32 MC2 Magazine www.mc2magazine.com through single-pipe exhaust. Between using the GP as a daily driver when he first purchased it, then putting some 30,000 miles on it the first year in his trip around the world, and now tearing up racetracks with it, we would guess that GP #0823 is probably the most active GP on the planet, though the RMW GP featured elsewhere in this issue has to be a close second. Although the current incarnation of Oscar Revelli’s GP looks at the moment to be a permanent one, we wouldn’t bet on it. Oscar may yet think up one or two more stunts to pull off in his hard-working GP. GP 0823 F r d a tom a rd av k i c n a r w r or l a en t c oun I e ure t n d to ay h e ta l