A HILLMAN MINX

As CCB contributors go, I’m probably just about the best-qualified to write this feature, because I’ve ‘Lived with’ an Audax Hillman Minx for the past 30 years! The Series II Minx 697CKJ officially entered my life on December 18 1991, though I first met (and photographed) it a couple of years earlier. Since then, it’s been a constant friendly presence.

It’s also, perhaps, a sign of changing times that I bought Minxy, my oldest preserved car, just under a year before my youngest one, the Rover 827 Coupe, was made.

OVERVIEW

The ‘Audax’ Hillman Minx was made from 1956 to 1967, and during those 11 years it went through no fewer than eight series facelifts – Series I, Series II, Series III, IIIA, IIIB, IIIC, Series V and Series VI – so one every 14 months on average. There was no Series IV Minx. This was to be a new and bigger car but at the last-minute Rootes management decided going bigger was too great a risk, with problems elsewhere in the group and the