The English microcar, the “Mini,” was introduced in 1959 as the Austin Seven and the Morris Mini-Minor. Under British-Leyland ownership, the cars were restyled in 1969 and renamed the Mini Clubman for which the Clubman Estate was a small 3-door station wagon. With right-hand drive, this 1979 edition has a rebuilt drivetrain, but we’re told it needs a few cosmetic touches. From Orlando, Florida, the Mini seen here is available here on craigslist for $8,350. Another cool tip from Pat L.!
These cars had a squarer frontal look than before and the design would carry through to 1980. Versions produced from 1975-on used a 1,098-cc inline-4 engine that produced 45 hp. That doesn’t sound like a lot of propulsion, but then the things only weighed about 1,400 pounds without any human cargo. Across its lifetime, the Clubman variants saw combined production of more than 580,000 cars, of which a third or 198,000 were the Clubman Estate (aka station wagon).
The seller’s car wasn’t intended for the U.S. market when new given the placement of its steering wheel. Instead, it probably came home with someone who spend time in Europe where the car was quite popular. This Estate has just 62,000 miles, but we don’t know how many are on the engine and transmission as they were rebuilt five years ago. As such, we’re told it runs and drives well, so it should be ready for Cars & Coffee.
But if you want perfection before showing it off, a new paint job might be in order (according to the seller). On the other hand, the interior is just fine except for the headliner which needs replacing. In terms of photos, we get mostly get closeups of various parts of the car, so it’s hard to determine what the whole package adds up to. The seller says it comes with five wheels and tires, but doesn’t that go without saying?
I wonder if anyone ever tried to convert one of these from right-hand drive to left-hand?
I drove a postal jeep once when I was considering buying it. but absolutely could not stand the right-hand drive thing. I had always wanted one and Didn’t think it would bother me, but it did.
It’s easy to change left to right or right to left all parts available from Minispares uk you might have to cut a couple of wires on the wiring loom, then heat shink them back together.
Dead easy to convert – built from the factory for all markets, so all the mounting points are there (just like on MGBs, etc). Steering rack swap, dash swap on this one (earlier Minis had the instruments in the middle for exactly multi-markets purposes), move the column and pedal box over, and re-plumb the hydraulics.
cheers,
BT
Dead easy? That is probably the overstatement of the year. For some, it would be akin to designing a solid rocket motor, and would likely be expensive to boot. Just how much do you think it would cost, and how many hours do you expect the modifications to take?
Right hand drive if an absolute nightmare to drive anywhere that drives on the correct side of the road.
Daymo’s comment about the engine orientation is moot; the correct transverse mounting is illustrated. The cylinders are oriented in-line, vs. a “V” configuration or horizontally opposed.
fixrman
Uh, no, not really an overstatement for anyone that knows their way around a car with a couple of basic hand tools. The original poster didn’t ask what it would cost – he was asking about the difficulty in making the changes. Its not hard to do this.
If you would like to know what it would cost in parts, do as the previous poster suggested and look it up – you need a new rack, and a LHD instrument binnacle, and you could easily find these used in the UK if you didn’t want to buy new. . Those are the big bits, everything else is pocket money.
A competent backyard mechanic could do this job over a weekend.
bt
All Minis used a transverse engine (not in-line).
transverse refers to the orientation of the engine in the bay. Inline refers to how the cylinders are arranged in the engine. inline, V shape, H ( think Subaru and air cooled VWs)
All minis and MINIs use an inline 4 (or 3 in the case of Modern MINIs) that are mounted transversely.
The engine is still an inline 4.
Nice looking tinnie except for the questionable rockers.
It’s about a 6hr job plus the cost of a rack and some hose / brake hard lines to swap a mini to LHD (plus dealing w the dash on this one) but the cars are so small it really isn’t a big deal to drive them in RHD…bigger cars can be terrible, but not a mini.
I see some adjustable lower control arms, wonder what other goodies it has?