Did you know? Identifying your Mini Mark

I had a once in a lifetime opportunity recently, first to learn of one of the co-founders of Bremen, and then secondly to be able to sit down face to face and discuss these wonderful cars with him. 

While discussing the production of Mini Mark's with co-founder DeWayne Creighton, he shared some insights on what period of the company's production your car may have been built in. I will break these down to early, mid and late production units.

The very first Mini Marks did not have an operational trunk in front. The "trunk" had no doors and you could only gain access to the area through the passenger compartment. 

There were also two different versions of door latches and interior handles. The early cars had a slide rod for the door catch. DeWayne indicated the early latch actually had to be built into the doors. The interior fiberglass door panel was installed after the latch was installed. (May be one reason I wasn't able to fully remove my latch during my rebuild.) As years progressed cars moved to a conventional door lock mechanism as on current production cars. The inside handles were different on these units as well. Early versions had a push post and later versions had a pull out interior latch. 

The last items 0f distinction were the bumpers. early cars had a solid one piece flat bumper front and back. mid years had two piece flat steel bumpers, and later years had formed steel bumpers.

Working with these three "keys" you may be able to determine if you have an early, mid or late production car.

We also discussed the molds that were used in production. The molds and tooling were destroyed in the fire of January 1975, Bremen rebuilt all of the tooling and he stressed that it wasn't cheap tooling. Some companies made molds which were held together with he said,  but our molds were all braced with steel tubing, giving consistent bodies each and every time.  As I had mentioned in an earlier post, the sad ending is that he believes the molds were hauled to dump after production stopped in 1984. The bodies were madeof chopped strand rather than laid mat, and DeWayne was confident you could pick up the car from the lip of the fender. (not sure I want to try that to prove him right or wrong)