I have passed on about all I know but, given time, I may be able to shed more light. Many of the people involved have passed away now and knowledge of the car will have gone with them. I am aiming at 60 myself and I am well aware what (little)is known about this car should be preserved now, part of the reason why I am sharing it.

Al

No worries Al, nothing is completely irrelevant if referring to Minis

I'm certainly interested in the history of the Mini (and Moke) in NZ.

I'm currently still trawling through the history of BMC-Leyland in Australia, but hopefully some time in next couple of years (I hear there's a big party in August next year) I am looking at coming over to NZ again, and will look more throughly into the NZ history - the factories, etc.

Any info you can provide - pics, production info, factory info (addresses, dates, etc) would be very helpful.

Feel free to PM me or email me at [email protected]

Cheers,
Watto.

Hi Watto,
I have never tried researching in any such way and I wouldn' really know where to start but it would be interesting to know more about the history. There is a book on the NZ mottor assembly industry and that would be a good basis to start from.

In August next year, the Nelson Mini Club will host a huge week long celebration to mark 50 years of our little friends and it will be quite some event. Beryl and I are taking our cars and I hope to have my daughter's GT there too, so thgree cars from our family alone. I have heard there is likely to be 12 utes there, quite a big number for NZ.

And now back to the prototype 850 story. I have rung two guys (Iain Fletcher and Max Stewart) that were with the Invercargill agents (Watts and Grieve and P H Vickery) in the late '50's and mid sixties, neither can recall the car but there is no doubt it existed. As one of them said, we didn't take much notice of such things and the Mini had not really reached huge popularity at that point. The Southland News Company has long gone too.

Regards
Al

Well done Al...I'm sure you will get to the bottom of this...

plenty research resources in NZ...

http://publicationsnz.natlib.govt.nz/index.html

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast

http://www.archives.govt.nz/

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"Show me the Mini!"