According to Jon Pressnells book South Africa produced 100,000 Minis at Blackheath, near Cape Town over 23 years reaching 66% local content, even casting their own engine blocks, key body pressings, forging crankshafts and cams and meaning there are many differences to UK built cars. The Cooper S had locally made deep bucket seats as standard, only came in Palm Green with a Protea White roof (other colours special order) and Australian doors with wind-up windows were used from 1967 and the Mk2 rear lights and window from Dec 1968 as the rear panel came in from Britain. The Mk2 designation continued until 1974 but had Mk3 doors from 1970!
A short lived South African Mk3 introduced in 1969 had the Elf/Hornet rear end (with Mini front) using BL's palmed off now obsolete tooling. The Mk3 was discontinued in Dec 1971 with the Clubman arriving in Aug 1971. The last SA Mini HLE was produced in Oct 1983.
South African Cooper that was on ebay recently:
http://cgi.ebay.co.u...emZ120515734788
Edited by mab01uk, 13 March 2010 - 07:24 PM.
