Cars – No 2

So, on to my first real car. And what a car it was … a 1968 Morris Mini Deluxe in gorgeous “police blue” duco with matching blue interior. Rego number RWV-152.

After the speeding episode with the bike I think even dad recognised that perhaps a car might be a little safer. So we went looking for something not too big but in good nick.

This was your original “onelittleoldladyowner” vehicle with low miles. From memory it was around $950 when we bought it late in 1971.

The Mini Deluxe was the second generation Mini to hit Australia. It had a 998cc motor and a proper gear linkage, unlike the original Mini 850 where the gear lever went straight into the gearbox. It also had wind up windows and a heater, although no such luxury as a radio, and you started it using the key rather than the rubber button on the floor in the 850.

These were a bloody great little thing to drive … this was where I learnt to do a handbrake turn and to put your foot on the gas to get it to steer into a corner.

The young ‘uns reading this will be amazed to hear that it cost a total of $2.50 to fill it up from empty … around 5 gallons at about 50 cents a gallon.

We used to do crazy things in Minis back then … like parking on a slant on purpose at the drive-in just so we could get out and lift the back around straight! My younger-by-3 years sister also tried to throw up out the left hand back window one day, if you can recall how little these opened that you can probably picture the outcome.

Much later edit: The car initially shown on this post wasn’t mine, I couldn’t find a photo of it. In fact, the one below was really green … I had to use Photoshop to “re-spray” it. I eventually found a photo of RWV-152 while going through mum’s slides.

Well, there you go … Car 2 – a 1968 Mini Deluxe. It was traded around August 1972 on a … nup, you’ll have to either guess or wait until the next entry!