Actually , I forgot about Rae , she has an 850 with the same side stripes as yours Cush , she'd most likely definitely know . Time to PM ....

The original Mini as introduced in England initially had a luke-warm reception, and it wasn't until about twelve months later that British sales started to take off. The micro car market here, represented by such cars as Fiat's 500, Goggomobile and the Lloyd Hartnett was very small, and BMC Australia were worried that the Mini would fall into the same category in buyers' minds.After an intensive engineering campaign to 'Australianise' the car for our conditions, thought was given as to how to promote it.

The name 'Mini' was to be avoided, as this gave connotations of tiny and cheap. As the car was to be sold only as a Morris, it was given the rather unoriginal title of 850, denoting the engine capacity. The word 'incredible' was used in all the advertising, as was the term 'East-West'.Ian Milbank, the company's brilliant advertising manager, came up with the idea of releasing the car as if it were human. The entire country was amazed on the morning of March 23rd 1961 when they opened their papers to find an almost empty blank page with a tiny births notice in the middle. (Some papers nearly refused to allow the ad for technical reasons).BMC thought they would be lucky to sell 10,000, so were quite unprepared when the public did visit their showrooms. On that first day an unprecedented amount of orders were taken for the little cars, which were only available in red, white, blue or yellow. On the back window, a transfer told the world that this was 'The Incredible Morris 850 with the East-West Engine'.