Looking forward to read the ute stories in this Mini Experience issue, it should be on its way to me any day now

Concerning Australia and utes, we know there's not many genuines out there but some were imported from new in the early days, figures of around 10 have been mentioned for Australia, although it might be a bit more.

One of the boardmembers on www.minipickup.org has a theory he wishes to investigate, but it's hard to find any info on this matter. Here's his thought:



Let's hear what you guys think ?

Ha, "most Ozzy owners buy their pickups from New Zealand" makes it sound like they're just laying about the place here! Apart from the rusted hulks in various garages I've only ever seen maybe half a dozen, and a couple of those are probably conversions.

BMC or BL or even LA did not import utes into Australia.

Australia had very complicated import rules in the 60's and 70's. Complete vehicles were subject to very high import duties. High enough to stop the import of any cars from overseas except for expensive luxury cars. The only cheap imports were Japanese who could make cars cheap enough to be able to suffer the import duties but even then Datsun and Toyota both had CKD assembly in Australia
So you can pretty much count out the import of complete cars from anywhere.

The story of 10 utes imported into Australia new sounds like a version of the story that I was told about a factory in Sydney that imported a handful for use as tugs for towing trailers inside the factory. I don't know if it was 2, 3 or 20! I have mentioned this story a few times but I have never found out the truth.

There were private imports of course but there were also restrictions like you had to own and use the vehicle for 12 months etc etc before importing it. It hink from memory it also had to be a used car.

I helped a couple of people import cars while I was living the UK. They came over bought the car, I was custodian of it for 12 months and then they arranged all the importation details. I then delivered it to the container company. One was a lotus elan and the other was a hardtopped MGB GT. That was two cars that wouldn't have been in Austrlia otherwise.

Mike

http://www.aronline.co.uk/index.htm?nzwholestoryf.htm

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/cars-and-th ... industry/4

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/505152

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