Austin Classic Mini

The Austin-badged Mini arrived on 26 August 1959 as the Austin Seven — often written Se7en — alongside the Morris Mini-Minor, and became the Austin Mini on 1 January 1962. From 1969 Mini was a marque of its own and the Austin and Morris badges came off the saloons. 5,387,862 were built over forty-one years, the last at Longbridge on 4 October 2000. New Zealand took to it early: the first locally assembled cars were launched in February 1960, CKD kits arriving in packs of forty-eight, and 58,793 were assembled here between January 1960 and October 1976 — Austin-badged cars at Petone, Morris cars at Newmarket and later Panmure, with radiators, coils, plugs, batteries, glass, seat frames and trim all sourced locally. Paddy Hopkirk won the 1964 Monte Carlo outright in a Cooper S, and Timo Mäkinen and Rauno Aaltonen repeated it in 1965 and 1967.

Two splits matter more than all the rest. Suspension: rubber cone from launch, Hydrolastic on saloons only from September 1964, and back to rubber cones in stages — the 850 and 1000 in 1969, but the Clubman, 1275GT and Mk3 Cooper S not until 1971. Vans, pick-ups and estates were never Hydrolastic at all. Doors: Mk1 and Mk2 have external hinges and sliding windows; the Mk3 of October 1969 brought larger doors with concealed hinges and wind-up windows, and the three door families share almost nothing — skins, glass, seals, hinges, handles and trim all differ. Then in January 1973 the rod-change gearbox arrived and took the floorpan with it, the tunnel changing from a semi-elliptical to a rectangular profile across the range, which most histories leave out entirely. Australian-built cars are their own puzzle: the wind-up window door of March 1965 keeps external hinges, a combination that does not exist on a British car.