La rivista e il marketplace globale per gli appassionati di auto d’epoca, creati da appassionati.
La rivista e il marketplace globale per gli appassionati di auto d’epoca, creati da appassionati.
To celebrate the production of new Mini’s in the Netherlands, VDL NedCar and BMW Group Netherlands started a hunt for an original example of one of the Austin Mini's that was assembled in The Netherlands by Molenaar's Automotive Factories in Amersfoort. After a long search producing zero results, suddenly this Mini popped in. It is for certain a very early production car with chassis number # 1083 and a Dutch 1960 registration BK-12-61, but...
We keep wondering if it really is a Molenaar Austin Mini as we could not find a Molenaar ID plate on the photos of the car. From its launch year 1959 to 1966 importer Molenaar's Automotive Factories in Amersfoort assembled over 4,000 Minis. We did contact BMW mutiple times by telephone and e-mail regarding the Molenaar issue, however they didn't reply to our questions. In the background of the photo one can see reproduction of the car's registration, showing: 00AUST019-1083. Is it possible to say if this is a UK, Dutch or Belgium or other production car? According to the UK-based 1959miniregister.com all Austin Minis had the prefix AA2S7.
UPDATE: we were under the impression the car AA2S7-1083 is not the same as the Dutch car; yet now we understand from the 1959miniregister and in the meantime also from BMW Netherlands that in fact AA2S7-1083 and 00AUST019-1083 are the very same car. Remains our question why the Dutch builder (most likely Molenaar) used a different prefix than the one on the chassis plate. Interesting to note that The British Motor Industry Heritage Trust dating certificate is using yet another variety of prefix/ch. number: AA2S7-L/1083 (the L referring to LHD we guess). See also comments of the register spokesman Bill Bell.