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Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
I was cycling through Petaluma and saw a beautifully painted dark red ‘57-‘59 Hillman Minx convertible with a new looking black top heading the other direction, so I couldn’t get a closer look…
It could have been my first car, also a Minx, a ‘59 faded reddish convert with a shot top and failing upholstery from the hot San Fernando Valley sun. That car was only 19 years old when I got it for free from a friend of my dad. It cost me $10 for a good Morris Minor distributor to get it running, and another $10 to make it stop, for wheel cylinder kits and proper brake fluid from BAP. (British Auto Parts? in Canoga Park) Next up was the big bucks I spent for a good used radiator and a grill, $20! The grill really worked, keeping any more rocks from puncturing the radiator again.
I drove that cool little ‘vert all over the the hills around Malibu and in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, all the crazy adventures with your first car when you don’t know any better, though I always managed to drive it home, despite a few misadventures. I ended up trading it with one of my brothers less than a year later for a 1971 Yamaha 360 Enduro, something way more fun, or so I thought at the time. He sold the Hillman soon after.
In 1980 another brother and I bought two 1959 Bugeye Sprites. We fixed them up and drove them all over the Santa Cruz Mountains and California and beyond. We are a few years older, but we both still have our Sprites. Also corrupted was our youngest brother, who I taught to drive a clutch car in a Bugeye on the way back from Snowmass in 1982, who also has a ‘59 Bugeye that I found for him over 30 years ago.
But I digress! Man, that Petaluma Minx was nice looking…
It could have been my first car, also a Minx, a ‘59 faded reddish convert with a shot top and failing upholstery from the hot San Fernando Valley sun. That car was only 19 years old when I got it for free from a friend of my dad. It cost me $10 for a good Morris Minor distributor to get it running, and another $10 to make it stop, for wheel cylinder kits and proper brake fluid from BAP. (British Auto Parts? in Canoga Park) Next up was the big bucks I spent for a good used radiator and a grill, $20! The grill really worked, keeping any more rocks from puncturing the radiator again.
I drove that cool little ‘vert all over the the hills around Malibu and in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, all the crazy adventures with your first car when you don’t know any better, though I always managed to drive it home, despite a few misadventures. I ended up trading it with one of my brothers less than a year later for a 1971 Yamaha 360 Enduro, something way more fun, or so I thought at the time. He sold the Hillman soon after.
In 1980 another brother and I bought two 1959 Bugeye Sprites. We fixed them up and drove them all over the Santa Cruz Mountains and California and beyond. We are a few years older, but we both still have our Sprites. Also corrupted was our youngest brother, who I taught to drive a clutch car in a Bugeye on the way back from Snowmass in 1982, who also has a ‘59 Bugeye that I found for him over 30 years ago.
But I digress! Man, that Petaluma Minx was nice looking…
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