Talk about a TRUE barn-find! This left-hand-drive 1959 Hillman Minx convertible,  is for sale here on Craigslist in Delaware, and it definitely checks all the boxes!

Patina? Check. “Barn Dirt”? Check. Flat tires? Check. Affordable asking price? Well, that depends…got $1700 burning a hole in your pocket?

Original battery and license plate? Check and check.

While the listing is a bit light on details, a picture is worth a thousand words.

This Minx appears to be a Series III, which was produced 1958-1959, in England under the famous (or infamous, depending upon your perspective) Rootes Group management / ownership, as part of the “Audax” design. Interestingly, the same firm who designed Studebaker coupes in the early 1950s, the Raymond Lowey group, assisted Rootes in design work for the 1956-1967 “Audax” Minx.

The seller states that the engine does not run, but does not tell us the size of the engine. It is most likely the 1.4 liter inline-4, which was rated at the time for a top speed of 76 mph and 0-to-60 in 25.4 seconds, while delivering 26 mpg (U.S.) It was available with a variety of manual or automatic gearbox choices, the automatic being a Smiths Easidrive.

Production numbers for the 1959 Minx are a little hard to find. Production volume of a left-hand-drive model, let alone one destined to “cross the pond” would probably have been rather low, making this example rather unique.

This is definitely a full-restoration candidate, needing just about everything, but one worthy of the time and effort. There weren’t many of these to start with, and there are even fewer examples left now.