So Long! The ‘Ugliest’ Car In Minnesota Just Drove Away To Michigan!

Welcome to 2023, as I was 'ringing' in the New Year, on our couch, between phone calls from family and friends, I wound up finding a car, reported to be out of Minnesota, that has to go down as one of the ugliest cars ever to drive on Minnesota roads. The vehicle, a mash-up of sorts, was recently sold and was being driven to it's new home state of Michigan.

I reached out to the new owner of the Uff-Da Express, Alex Wayne on Facebook and he was kind enough to share some, of what he describes, of the vehicle's backstory and photos of the vehicle in various states of being built and how many colors it has been.

Here is what Alex had to say about the vehicle, and then we will get into the pictures he sent me.

The MINI van was built by team Punchraffe (its a private account) on Instagram. They participate in the Lemons Rally which is a scavenger hunt in different areas of the country usually over a 3-day span with junky/crappy cars.

They built it initially for Retreat from a Moscow at the end of 2021. It’s a 1995 Astro van body on a 2005 Mini Cooper. The van body was put on for a sleeping area to keep the costs down and not pay for hotels. Lemons rally rewards you for the worse the vehicle is with starting points before you are handed your route book.

The route book gives you an object to find in a specific city. You find it and take a picture and post to Instagram with a specific hashtag for points. They won that rally with it. They participated in the Rustbelt Ramble this past July and they changed up the theme of the van by painting it like a 70s hippie van.

Unfortunately, they didn’t win any awards at that rally. Its current appearance is for the third rally. They participated in 2022 called the great river road. It started in Baton Rouge Louisiana and ended in Minneapolis. They took third place in that rally. In total, they drove about 12,000 miles in the vehicle. I became friends with them last year at a rally. They participated in a different vehicle and heard that they were selling the minivan. I knew it was something I had to have. So I ended up flying out on 30 December after work to purchase it. I flew out with my teammate from a few rallies that we did and we drove it home straight through the night. We did about 600 miles of driving till we made it home to Grand Rapids Michigan where we live.

The mini has its issues, but it is pretty fun. We plan to do a complete transformation to it before the rally we plan to participate in this August. I will attach some photos of the vehicle in different paint schemes. It was initially white on its first rally since they left a few days after building it. It was yellow on the Rustbelt Ramble, and its current plaid pattern was for the great river road in November of last year. It actually got booted by the parking Authority in Louisiana thinking it was an abandoned vehicle.

We are the Lemons_Little_yikes on Instagram and we have a YouTube channel called Hughbert’s projects. We hope to feature it in a couple of episodes and show the transformation that we do to it.

So as you can see, or read the car has a pretty interesting history, and Alex just had to have it, so what did he get? Check out all the photos he sent us!

I guess we should now take a moment to remember all the time the Uff-Da Express had in Minnesota...