Mini Moke

The Mini Moke is a small, doorless, front-wheel-drive utility and recreational convertible that grew out of the British Motor Corporation's Mini. Alec Issigonis and John Sheppard designed it in the hope that the Mini's mechanical parts under a more rugged body would win military business from Land Rover. Prototypes known as the Buckboard were shown to the British Army as a parachute-droppable vehicle, but poor ground clearance and a low-powered engine counted against it, so BMC sold the Moke to civilians instead and launched it in Britain in 1964 with an 848 cc engine. The Cowley plant built 14,518 between 1964 and 1968, and production carried on in Australia, where about 26,000 were made from 1966 to 1981 as the Morris Mini Moke and later the Leyland Moke, and in Portugal, where about 10,000 were made from 1980 to 1993.