"As the ’70s drew on, the Canadian Minis needed an increasing amount of modification in order to remain on sale there. Here’s a brief overview of those changes – although the most obvious, its bumpers, won’t need too much in the way of explanation..........." More on AROnline: http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/cars/mi ... ian-minis/
Great pics, fascinating how minis adapted to all countries that were sold in (probably the innos being the best ones) . Besides the bumper adaptation, the white looks nice with the extra side lights and the head rest in the seats.
It looks like these cars had been lifted considerably, most likely for bumper height rules, and the green one looks like it has "dropped" fender flares so the tires don't look out of place in the very high wheel arches.
The USA just banned the cars altogether for 1968 and onwards, presumably for protec.. oops, I meant "safety" reasons.
I don't believe the U.S. banned the Mini. I suspect BMC/Leyland chose to not put the Mini through for safety/emissions testing or make any modifications. This coincided with the introduction of the Austin America which they may have felt was a better fit for the U.S. market (it wasn't).
The Canadian Minis pictured in this thread would have met U.S. standards until about 1980.
I think Kelley is probably correct. The Australian built Moke Special Export model (the original Moke "Californian") was built to fulfil an order for the US Virgin Islands around 1972. They had a number of unique features to enable them to meet US requirements. For some reason the order was never fulfilled and they ended up being sold in Australia.
its the most obvius place for them in the world 