Sign in Subscribe

A New Home for Classic Mini DIY Articles

Cole Gentry

• 4 min read
Share

If you're reading this, you've already met the new Classic Mini DIY newsletter. It looks a little different. It loads a little faster. It lives at a new web address — news.classicminidiy.com. And it's no longer on Substack.

I want to take a few minutes to explain what changed, why I made the move, and what it unlocks for everything Classic Mini DIY does — because this isn't just a platform swap. It's part of a bigger shift in how all the CMDIY properties fit together.

The short version

The Classic Mini DIY blog is now hosted on Ghost, an independent publishing platform purpose-built for writers and creators. Your subscription transferred automatically. If you're a paid supporter, your billing came along too. Old links from forum posts, Reddit threads, and shared articles still work — I set up redirects so nothing breaks.

That's the practical stuff. Now the why.

Why I moved

The honest answer has three layers.

1. The Blog needed to be part of the family.

CMDIY isn't just a blog. It's:

  • A knowledge base at classicminidiy.com — wiring diagrams, technical specs, archive scans, and the AI-powered help chat
  • A marketplace at The Mini Exchange where the community buys and sells parts and project cars
  • Mobile toolbox apps on iOS and Android with calculators, reference data, and maintenance tracking
  • And the blog you're reading now

For years, the blog sat off to the side on Substack — separate login, separate identity, separate everything. Moving to Ghost lets me start weaving the blog into the rest of the ecosystem in ways that weren't possible before. That work is just beginning, but the foundation is now in place.

2. I wanted to own the relationship with you.

Substack was a great place to start a blog. It removed the friction of getting going, it had a built-in audience discovery layer, and it just worked. But it's also a platform that owns the relationship between writer and reader in ways that aren't always obvious until you try to do something on your own.

Ghost flips that. It's open-source, independent, and built around the idea that the reader belongs to the writer — not the platform. That matters more as the CMDIY community grows and the blog does more.

3. The economics finally make sense.

Substack takes 10% of every paid subscription. For a small publication, that's a meaningful chunk of every dollar that goes to platform overhead instead of back into the work. Ghost charges a flat hosting fee and takes nothing from subscriptions. Over time — as the paid supporter base grows — that means more dollars reach the wrench, the camera, the parts, and the time it takes to make this stuff.

If you're a paid supporter: thank you. Your support directly funds the work, and now more of it reaches the work.

What stays the same

  • Same writer. Same voice. Same obsessions with minis I'll never fully understand, and engines I keep tinkering with.
  • Same content. Every post that was on Substack is here. Every URL still resolves. Every paid subscription is intact.
  • Same email cadence. No spammy increase, no dramatic reduction. Same rhythm I've always tried to keep.

What's coming next

This is where it gets fun.

Now that the blog is on the same family of tools as the rest of CMDIY, a few things become possible that weren't before:

  • Cross-property perks for paid supporters. I'm working on giving sustaining members from the iOS and Android toolbox apps automatic access to paid blog content — one subscription, multiple benefits across the CMDIY world.
  • Better recommendations. When you're reading a post about, say, an SU carburetor rebuild, the blog will be able to surface the related knowledge base entry, recent marketplace listings of relevant parts, and any toolbox calculator that helps. The pieces are now in the same garage.
  • More archive content. With Ghost's flexibility, I can finally bring more of the old Classic Mini archives — original brochures, service manuals, magazine scans — into the blog format in ways that actually read well on mobile.
  • A blog signup right in the toolbox. Future versions of the iOS and Android apps will let you subscribe without ever leaving the app.

None of this happens overnight. But all of it is on the runway now.

The web is still about owning your stuff

There's a broader trend underneath all of this. More creators — writers, builders, podcasters, artisans — are quietly moving off centralized platforms and back onto independent ones they control. Not as a protest, not as a stunt, just as a recognition that the long game looks different than the short game.

Classic Minis themselves are kind of the perfect metaphor here. These are cars built in 1959 that are still on the road in 2026 because of an owner-driven, parts-available, repair-friendly philosophy that the modern car industry abandoned. The CMDIY platform should reflect those same values: independent, durable, owner-controlled, built to last.

That's what this move is about.

Thanks for being here

Honestly, the most rewarding part of running CMDIY isn't the cars or the writing. It's the people who reply to blog emails with questions about a 1972 Cooper S. The folks who post a marketplace listing and find a buyer halfway across the world. The mechanics in their garages who use the toolbox apps to size a clutch slave cylinder at 11 PM on a Saturday.

You're the reason any of this exists. The platform may have changed, but the mission hasn't:

Help people keep classic Minis on the road.

Hit reply anytime. Forward this to a Mini friend. And if you've got an idea for what the blog should cover next — wiring diagrams, restoration walkthroughs, marketplace finds, history pieces — let me know.

See you in the next one.

— Cole
Classic Mini DIY