BUCKING THE TREND
The story of the Moke is a familiar one. Originally intended as a simple, lightweight uitility vehicle for the military, it didn’t get far past the prototype stage before the small wheels and lack of ground clearance ruled it out for such purposes. It was then offered to the civilian market as a low cost, low maintenance utility vehicle, perfect for farmers and tradesmen. It no doubt came as something of a surprise to Issigonis when the Moke became the darling of the hipster set.
In the late Sixties, Les Harris was a student at Sheffield University, and like all students since time began, he was skint. “I had very little money, that was the problem, and I didn’t study much, which was also a problem. I’d come from a public school where we weren’t even allowed to talk to girls and to get to university where there were all these girls, it was a big distraction,” he says with a chuckle. “I needed money because my parents paid me a very basic amount for my accommodation and
