reading Building Cars in Australia...from the BMC/Leyland Heritage Group...

Work on the CKD plant commenced in 1948. Two former aircraft hangers from Rathmines NSW (Catalina's etc) were bought at Govt Disposals and a modern brick façade added.

600 (that's a lot of white shoes!) motor traders and dignitaries attended the opening including The Right Honourable The Viscount Nuffield GBE MA FRS DCL LLD.

Simple layout, all manual materials handling and the only conveyer was in the paint shop.
ADO15 Morris 850 1961-64

Renamed CAB2 1968, then operated right through till 1974

Mini bodies were initially built at 12 per day (on wooden jigs!)

CKD packs included everything, bags of nuts and bolts (as few as 6 in a bag)

Later with containerization, larger shipments, eg cyl blocks and heads in batches of 250

Bodies were degreased, sprayed with primer, sealer and colour coats and baked in an oil-fired oven! The thin paint line along the full car length swage was hand painted initially by brush then by narrow brass roller.

Gearbox assemblies were all electrically driven to check for noise level and selector operation.

First 850 sample unboxed in Experimental was "bright red".

Nervous Sales got Mini dropped from name, and other concerns over small wheels were immediately assuaged when sales took off.

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"Show me the Mini!"

No, not Lee..

Why do car numbers start at 501?
Is this just a tradition?

It’s been suggested that the UK assembled cars started with the factory phone number!

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"Show me the Mini!"

I believe it's so you wouldn't know you bought numero uno off the production line (probably built on a Friday!).

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DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

I would have thought that the first model of each off the line would be retained anyway...

(probably nothing got built on a Friday after lunchtime Doc!)

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"Show me the Mini!"

My understanding is that because every model had a number of prototypes and pre-production cars, there was always plenty of space allocated in the numbering system so that these cars, if numbered, would not cause any confusion with the actual production cars.
With Austin the numbers for production cars traditionally began at 101 (probably because they never envisaged having more than 100 prototypes and pre-production cars) - However, although only about 7 prototypes and 25 pre-production cars of the Austin Ant were built, mine, one of the pre-production cars, is car 103. So maybe it was only for the prototypes that this applied.
Anyway, MG traditionally started its production car numbering at 251, because MG's telephone number in the early days was Abingdon 251.
BMC Australia always began numbering at 501. I don't know why this was the case. Australian engine numbers all began at 1001 for much the same reasons.
However, body numbers - the number stamped into the bare body once welded together and before being painted and assembled into a complete car, started at 001. That is why there should be ABOUT 500 difference between the body number and car number on your Mini or Moke (or any other BMC car). The numbers are rarely exactly 500 apart (especially on Cooper and Cooper S) as there were many reasons why cars could be built out of sequence - the most common which affected Cooper and Cooper S models was because the bodies went through the paint shop twice when a second colour was applied for the roof, which put those bodies out of sequence.

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Watto .
Photojournalist
Mini historian and enthusiast
http://www.theminiexperience.com.au

Thanks Watto, informative as always...now, what was the telephone number at Zetland!!

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"Show me the Mini!"

602 5777

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Watto .
Photojournalist
Mini historian and enthusiast
http://www.theminiexperience.com.au

Ooops! My mistake. That was Liverpool.

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Watto .
Photojournalist
Mini historian and enthusiast
http://www.theminiexperience.com.au

Which you probably mean to be Moorebank

http://www.bmclaheritage.org.au/Moorebank.html

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"Show me the Mini!"

Well, yeah, but it says Liverpool and although located at Moorebank the official address was Liverpool.

Bloody pedant!

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Watto .
Photojournalist
Mini historian and enthusiast
http://www.theminiexperience.com.au

Is the book published yet?

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Justin

Yes.

http://www.bmclaheritage.org.au/Shop.html

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ex-NSW Police 1970 MK II Cooper S
VMCI #43

[oil take that as a compliment coming from an ace pedantical researcher such as yerself!]

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"Show me the Mini!"