Mini Moke

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The Mini Moke was originally conceived as a car for the military, experiments taking place with different layouts including 4-wheel drive using two engines, one at the front and one at the rear.

The limitations of ground clearance soon put paid to any serious use off road so the firm looked to the agricultural and light commercial market. Alas, hopes were dashed yet again when Customs and Excise categorised it as passenger vehicle – attracting purchase tax and therefore making it far too expensive.

In the end, the cute looks and the sheer fun of the thing found favour with a completely unexpected audience who exploited its leisure potential, the car gaining notoriety for chasing over-sized beach balls and dashing around Portmeirion in the cult TV series 'The Prisoner'.

Produced in the UK until 1968, it carried on being assembled in Australia, Portugal and South Africa until 1993 when production was finally brought to a close.

They turned up in the most unexpected places, Catalina Island off the coast of California being one of them. A rocky outcrop of only 22 miles by 8 miles, it remains a popular holiday destination amongst the jet-set, being just a short boat trip from the Californian coast. Due to its restricted size, the authorities imposed a strict control on the number of vehicles allowed on the island (a one out - one in policy), making the 100-strong hire fleet of Mini Mokes a major attraction when they arrived in 1966.

This unique fleet of cars took on legendary status, soldiering on well past their sell-by date thanks to judicious cannibalisation (well it is a Pacific Island) of the more tired examples to hand.

It eventually became apparent to the owner of the company that their true worth lay in their ability to be traded off the Island to allow a new vehicle in. He advertised the 58 remaining vehicles in Hemmings News as one lot and sold them to an enterprising Moke devotee by the name of Larry Hollaway from New Jersey.

He and a group of friends spend a manic three days working round the clock loading up the 58 cars and their associated parts (most in a very poor state of repair) onto barges destined for the mainland. Some of the better ones were sold on through Tom Schram when they arrived in Long Beach, the rest making their way across the States to New Jersey.

Left to decay still further, the last 17 cars were purchased from Hollaway by UK based M-Parts, the car on offer being the first of these British-built Catalina Mokes to break cover since their repatriation back to the UK.

The restoration work was entrusted to Bespoke Mokes, the car being completely stripped to its constituent parts. A number of the body cum chassis panels were replaced with new items made on the original BMC tooling. The level of detail that has gone into its restoration is extraordinary, with even the spot-welds being made in their correct places and to the same sizes as the original.

Every single component has been rebuilt or replaced with genuine parts regardless of expense, the end result looking absolutely spot-on – far better in fact that it ever would have been when new (we doubt whether even BMC flatted and polished the underside of their cars!).

Interestingly, Catalina Island has a speed limit of just 25mph, so the hire company screwed a simple device onto the car which prevented the driver engaging fourth gear. When dismantling the engine, it was discovered that the teeth had actually been machined off fourth gear - presumably regular visitors brought their spanners with them to enable them to disable this simple external restriction to their fun!

Complete with Heritage Certificate and its original chassis tags, there is no doubt about the authenticity of this matching numbers car, or the superb quality of its restoration. If you want the absolute best, this is it – this fine example having spent is former life marooned on a Pacific Island, helping to form the folklore that surrounds these delightful and charismatic little cars.