Chapter 3: The Wimpey Car

My next Mini experience was our first year living in Saudi Arabia. In 1971 we moved to a place called Tabuk in the north-west part of Saudi Arabia, and here we became acquainted with an English construction company called Wimpey. They had built a fairly big camp there for all their staff, and the primary source of transportation for their workers was a Mini Moke. This was a car based on the Mini that was originally designed to be a military vehicle, but due to the lack of off-road capabilities caused by a poor ride-height resulting from the tiny 10” wheels and particularly a lack of 4-wheel drive it was not successful. It would later become a popular beach car at resorts on exotic islands in the Caribbean, but by the end of the 60’s this was not the case. Wimpey however had decided to adopt the Mini Moke as it was an extremely simple design that was well suited to the hot climate found in Tabuk. The Mokes were all painted yellow, and we quickly dubbed these cute little cars Wimpey cars.

 This is a bit what our "toy" car looked like at the time

At the time we were a small group of Swedish kids always playing together, and at one point we were given a Mini Moke as a life-size toy. The engine had been removed, so instead we would get four or five kids behind it to push it around, while one or two of the other kids would sit in the car and steer it and hit the brakes when needed. I suppose this may seem as a strange toy, and probably in today’s over sanitized society our parents would be locked up for providing such a dangerous toy, but for us it was the coolest thing ever.

If I had a much bigger garage I would love to have a Moke in it. Just like a Citroën Mehari, it is one of those extremely simple cars that really do not need to have any sort of roof. They should be driven short distances in summer weather, typically to go to the beach, or perhaps just out for an espresso on a terrace. But my garage is full…