Alameda Street Sighting - 1976 Morris Mini Clubman

It's been a little while since our last car feature so here's a little feature on a little car. I don't recall ever seeing a Mini Clubman before I spotted this one on the streets of Alameda, California. Okay, I've seen a lot of the modern MINI Clubman, the extra-long variant of the MINI Cooper. But this is the original Clubman, an effort to modernize the classic Mini whose original design and styling dated to 1959. Clubman was a more expensive car than the regular Mini and featured a longer front end with improved crash safety and easier service access.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1971 Mini 1000 Automatic

I've sort of made a recurring thing posting classic Minis every so often. Here's another monthly Mini, if you will. It's our first factory-automatic one, a 1971 Mini 1000.

Santa Cruz Street Sighting - 1970 Mini Cooper S

It's been over a month since our last classic Mini, so it was time for another. I've come across a few Mk III Minis from the early 1970s and they almost all seem to be Coopers or at least done up as such. To the untrained observer (like me), any old Mini with a few visual enhancements and some replica badges from Mini Mania or Moss Motors could be a Cooper or Cooper S.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Mini Mk III

Oh dear, a Mini. Let's see what an ignorant fool I am about these cars. Readers from the UK, please be gentle!

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1976 Mini 1000

When a car is built for many years with the same basic body it's easy to get the different models mixed up. The classic Mini is probably the best example of this, and probably the most easily interchangeable. Countless special editions and variants were released, and continuous improvements were made over the years. This car hails from the British Leyland years as evidenced by the fender badges, and is also badged as a Mini 1000, which if correct, makes it a 1976-77 model. It's also right-hand drive and bears a foreign license plate which resembles New Zealand. It wouldn't be the first NZ Mini I've seen in California.