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'434 Nwl' The First Mini Ever


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#1 RichMPiBlue

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Posted 18 August 2018 - 07:26 PM

 



#2 RichMPiBlue

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Posted 18 August 2018 - 07:26 PM

Hope this is still somewhere safe! 



#3 mab01uk

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Posted 19 August 2018 - 07:58 AM

434NWLsmall_zps14004d5f.jpg

Quote from Trevor Ripley 1959 Mini Register:
"This is known as the 'Ferriman' car. The description on the old video by Noel Edmonds is far from accurate. The car came off the production line at Cowley on 20th May 1959 bearing chassis number 140. It was LHD and was allocated to the experimental dept for proving tests and re-allocated with another number. After a couple of years when they had finished with it it was converted to RHD and sold to Bernard Ferriman who worked for BMC. It was then re-allocated yet another chassis number 98. This re-allocation of numbers occured with a few cars that were plucked off the line for testing and then subsiquently sold off 2nd hand to employees. ( They went backwards from 101 ).
Anyway this car was used by Bernard Ferriman well into the late 1980's. Eventually it was bought by Today Newspapers and after being 'restored' by Penta Garages in Reading was used as a competition prize in the Today newspaper. Amazingly the first prize of the competition was 434 NWL along with a brand new mini. The lucky winners of the two cars were Lindsay and Cathy Bromage. Cathy used the new one as her everyday car and 434 NWL ended up on display in a small museum at Alton Towers. In 1999 the Bromages decieded to sell it and it was entered in Sotherby's auction. I was very interested in buying the car at the time but after consulting Sotherbys it turned out that it seemed to have been re shelled and I decided against it. It made just short of £3000.
Many years later I made contact with Lindsay Bromage to see if he new the whereabouts of the car, but unfortunately he did not.
It certainly was an early and interesting car, although not really original. The 1959 Mini Register do not know its whereabouts now.
It was certainly an early car but by no means as early as it says on the video.
It would be very interesting to know its present whereabouts. It is on the DVLA database, but unlicensed since 1988
."
(Miniworld Summer 2011)

Really chassis number 140 re-numbered to 98 when it was sold in 1962. Reshelled into a later shell, where abouts now not known. Not a prototype but the 40th normal production Mini built. - 1959 Mini Register.
http://www.theminifo...surviving-mini/






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