A rare Morris Minor 1000 parked on Fairfax Avenue a mile south of Sunset Boulevard, Thursday August 10 - made into a hot rod with fancy wheels and pearl blue paint.  You sometimes see the station wagon version made into a "woody" - with surfboards on top - but few have actually seen these.  Here you will find one for sale - in Paris, with French registration.  Here is a famous one from San Francisco.

This one is just a sedan, but it's is very cool.  The driver - not pictured - was a buffed-out red-headed young man in his twenties, covered in tattoos.  Somehow that made sense.  

Notes on the Morris Minor below the photos -

Notes:  

The revolutionary Morris Minor (originally called Mosquito) was launched at the Earls Court Motor Show on 20 September, 1948. Named for an earlier Morris Minor car, it was the work of a team led by Alec Issigonis, who later designed the Mini. Sir Alec became famous for his creation of the Mini but he was really proudest of his participation in designing the Morris Minor. He considered it as being a vehicle which managed to combine many of the luxuries and conveniences of a good motor car with a price suitable for the working classes, while the Mini, introduced in 1959, was a Spartan mode of conveyance with everything cut to the bone. The Morris Minor, when compared with competitor products in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, excelled as a roomy vehicle with superior corning and handling characteristics.

Internal politicking inside manufacturer BMC (British Motor Corporation) may have led to the limited American sales of the Minor.

Over 1.6 million were eventually produced from manufacturing plants at Cowley, Oxfordshire, and exported around the world, with many variants of the original model. Production continued through to 1971, although it remains a well loved and collected vehicle. It also became a popular basis to build a hot rod on, because of the transatlantic styling that resembles a late 1940's Chevrolet. It was also lightweight and rear wheel drive, with the possibility of swapping in the Rover K-Series engine or the Fiat Twin Cam.

Minor 1000

The car was again updated in 1956 when the engine was increased in capacity to 0.9 L (948 cc/57 in³). The two piece split windscreen was replaced with a curved one-piece one and the rear window enlarged.

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If you use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me

These were shot with a Nikon D70 - using lens (1) AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or (2) AF Nikkor 70-300mm telephoto, or after 5 June 2006, (3) AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, 55-200 mm f/4-5.6G ED. They were modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0

The original large-format raw files are available upon request.