8 replies to this topic

[salvation]

Hey i just browsing on the USA version of ebay and i found a couple of mini's which are stated as being 1975 cars
but looking at them they seem to be mid 90's cars.
ebay mini#1

ebay mini #2

how many 70's cars have airbags well not a mini but these do.

Tell me i'm right because this well is just pissing me off.

[johnnysti]

There is no way they are that old!!!! They even have air bags fitted!! Also, the interior is very late cooper. Unless he has had a 1975 mini and instead of restoring it made them modern to every last detail!!??


Johnny

[me RS]

the 2nd one is a 1975 2000 spec monza

[cooper_shaz]

It is a common thing that they do over there, they get new minis and swap the id's, i.e chassis plate and V5.
This way they export the new car saying it is an older one but rebuilt as a new spec..

This is also why folk buy the V5's by themselves.. essentially you are buying a car that is not genuine.. i.e a ringer..

So after paying that money if it were proven that the vehicle was not as per the docs you could loose it..

Highly illegal but that the way they get round the importing emmisions and safety rules.

[Jammy]

And if you have a decent condition mini thats 25 years old or more, consider selling it to America, you'll get a rather large sum for it!

[minimole]

i thought that the emmission rules where only in calaforna (i cant spell )

[AlexM]

The first one is totally a scam, they even written a load of bull about it being updated to late cooper spec it would probably cost more than the car was worth to do that.

[minimanclive]

If you think about it the chances are that the genuine 1975 Mini rusted to pieces long ago. But I wonder if someones nice 2000 sports pack Mini suddenly disappeared never to be seen again?

[Dan]

They generally aren't made from nicked cars or anything like that. A lot of these were built by MBM and a lot more by Broadspeed but generally they were all done by large well known Mini companies like that as it takes a lot of resources to do this properly.
You aren't allowed to import a Mini into America that was made less than about 25 years ago (DK might supply the actual year) because of the emissions and road safety laws. After that date cars have to have bumpers that don't deform at all in a crash under 5 mph (which is why there's lots of broken lamps in car parks over there) and indicators higher off the road and side running lamps and all kinds of stuff.
So the trick was to buy a new body shell, a written off MPi and a very written off old Mini and merge the three together. Some of them though were indeed made from carefully re-built original bodyshells with modern eguipment added. Ever seen an MPi in a scrap yard? I haven't.
While this is quite illegal over here, it's not over there.
California does have the tightest emissions laws, but all states have them and they are very different from one to the next. All the cars had to be imported through a certain state (I think it's Georgia) as Georgia has the loosest emissions and car import and registering regs but once it's been in Georgia for more than a certain amount of time the car is legal in the whole of the USA (except California I think).

Oh and if you think it would cost more than the car was worth, I don't think you fully appreciate quite how cheap it actually is for a large professional garage to do the work they charge us so much for, or how much Americans are willing to pay for these cars.

Edited by Dan, 07 February 2006 - 06:02 PM.