[ Archive: Newton Commercial ]
94 July 2019 MiniWorld
“we were so busy making all these other things that we
didn’t really get into Mini until very late in the 1980s.”
carpet moulds from Firth Furnishings,
alongside all the Spitfi re tooling as well.
In 1997 we actually started moulding
carpets in a big way. We could also buy
the original specifi cation material at
that time, which was helpful, and then
we started doing other models as well.”
Sadly Newton Commercial cannot o er
every type of Mini trim to customers,
as Richard explains. “The problem is
that from about 1975 to 1990 was a very
strange period because they had lots
of standard cars but they also made
loads of specials and they were making
around 500 of them and they changed
the materials continually over that time.
Consequently, that period, as far as
original specifi cation trim, is not available
as it was made in such small quantities.
We’ve got one or two cloths, like
Lightning cloth, that we have since had
remanufactured but the other weird and
wonderful ones you’ll never see again
so there’s that period of about 15 years
where we couldn’t actually do anything
except our own specials. We designedSuccess has, in part, been
thanks to a loyal workforce.
John White is pictured
inbetween Vera
and Richard.By the 1990s the couple had
developed trim for Morris Minors,
MGs, Triumphs and Minis.