About car puzzle #136: Reptune GT

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We weren’t expecting too many answers on last week’s car puzzle, but still two of you got quite far. Alan Spencer knew that the car shown was a Reptune, and he knew this particular one was raced by Hugh MacGregor and John Kerbel in ’67 in Canada. He also said it was “largely copied from the Ogle SX1000, which (I assume from your clues!), MacGregor had previously imported from the UK.” but that’s not quite the case. Yes, it was inspired by the Ogle but the man behind the project was Dennis Prophet. And Gerd Klioba knew that. He wrote: “This is the Reptune GT, built by Reputation Tuning of Scarboro, Ontaria. That company was founded by Dennis Prophet. The car was influenced by the Broadspeed GT which Prophet imported into Canada.” Well, he is right as Prophet was indeed the Canadian Broadspeed agent, but also that of Ogle after having developed a soft spot for the Mini as the competition team manager for BMC of Canada. And it was the Ogle SX1000, which formed the inspiration for his own GT, launched in 1966. Gerd continues: “33 Of these Reptune Gullwing GTs were built. Later Reptune developed a gullwing body which could be dropped on the basic Mini body structure.” The very spritely Dennis Prophet, 88 years old now, confirmed there were even 35 GT bodies sold (with survivors very rare) when I approached him for more information for a new book - Maximum Mini 3, which describes both Reptune cars in more detail together with another 395 Mini derivatives. The book is available here. Congratulations Gerd, you win the famous PostWarClassic T-shirt for now.

(Words and pictures Jeroen Booij)

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