1960sBuild 01 / 11
1960 to 1969
The small car conquered the world.
From the Mini to the E-Type: ten years when British design set the template and everyone else copied it.
The White Heat
The decade Britain got modern: sideways engines, saloon racing, and optimism fitted as standard.
1960
The MOT test arrives in September, for cars ten years old and more. Britain’s garages get a new job.
1961
The E-Type launches at Geneva: a claimed 150 mph for just over £2,000. The world notices.
1962
The BMC 1100 arrives, with Issigonis’s packaging trick scaled up for the family.
1963
The Beeching Report reshapes the railways. If you want to go anywhere, you need a car.
1964
Harold Wilson wins, promising the “white heat” of technology. Optimism in overdrive.
1965
The 70 mph limit arrives on motorways. It was supposed to be temporary.
1966
England wins the World Cup. A nation celebrates in traffic.
1967
The breathalyser arrives on 9 October. The pub car park starts to thin out.
1968
The Ford Escort arrives. Two years later, one wins the London to Mexico World Cup Rally.
1969
Concorde flies, men walk on the moon, and the decade runs out of road.
If the fifties got Britain motoring, the sixties got it modern. The M1 had opened with no speed limit, National Service was gone, and by mid-decade roughly two in five people were under twenty-five with money to spend. The car stopped being transport and started being identity.
The engineering led the way. Issigonis turned the engine sideways, freed up the floor, and the Mini became the small-car template the whole world borrowed. The 1100/1300 made that cleverness family-sized and sold by the hundred thousand. Above the everyday traffic sat the glamour: an E-Type doing the kind of speed that cost ten times as much in Italian, a Mark 2 that was equally popular with bank managers and the men who robbed them.
And it raced on Sundays. A family saloon, a bold number on the door, giant-killing on the touring grids, then back to the school run on Monday.
The Cars That Did the Work
Two Britains on the same roads again, but quicker this time. The saloons that families actually bought and raced at weekends, and the roadsters the rest of the world fell for. The decade had room for both, and so do we.
The Bread and Butter
The saloons that topped the charts and the touring grids.
The Glamour
The roadsters and the coupés that made the magazines.
1960s Landmark
Ace Cafe, North Circular
The Centre of the Universe
The Ace Cafe sat on the North Circular, and in the Sixties it was the centre of the universe if you were young and your engine was warm. It started as a transport caff, open all hours, which is the whole point when you've nowhere else to be at midnight. The legend's mostly motorbikes, the record-racers timing themselves to the end of a stretch and back. But the cars came too, and nothing turned a head on that forecourt like an E-Type pulling in under the lights, all bonnet and bravado. Tea, chips, an argument about who was quickest, then back out into the wet with the streetlights smeared across the tarmac. It's the decade in one car park: loud, skint, and absolutely certain it was the best place on earth. It was.
Dean’s Notes
The Mod on the Wing
A 1964 Mini Cooper S on the street
The red 1964 Mini Cooper S with its contrasting black roof is a pure sixties design. Small, punchy, and completely boxy. By the time this model came along, the Mini wasn't just a clever bit of packaging by Issigonis. It was a fashion statement. You’d see them zipping through the London streets, driven by mods, actors, and racers alike.
Folk who were there will tell you they were everywhere: outside every café, round every corner, and gone before you’d turned your head. You could park one on a sixpence, and it handled like nothing else on the road, just like a go-kart. Lean on that thin front wing, carefully, with a cloth between your arm and the paint, and it feels light but incredibly well thought out.
The sixties were all about mod tailoring and A-road manners. Everything was changing, and the cars were leading the charge. Clean lines, chrome details, and a feeling that Britain was finally moving fast.
Dean & The Motor
The Long Bonnet
Jaguar E-Type
They say Enzo Ferrari called the E-Type the most beautiful car ever made, and standing next to one you don't argue. This is the early roadster: the long, long bonnet, the wire wheels, the little headlamps under glass before the rules made them tidy it up. In the Sixties it was the car every lad pinned up and every man promised himself. I've leaned on a few in my time, always carefully, always with a cloth between my arm and the paint. The thing people forget is how usable it was. It'd do the ton all day and still take you to the seaside. Leaning on one now, arms folded, I'm sixteen again for a minute. Some cars do that to you. This is the one that does it to me.
Show Winner
The 1967 Mini That Lost Its Roof
There are tidy Minis, and there’s this one: a 1967 Mini rebuilt from the floor pan up by a master engineer, with no roof (none, not folded, gone) and a sound system you’ll hear a good while before you see the car. It took the win at the Egham classic car show in Surrey in 2025, and Dean was photographed with the Mayor of Egham to prove it. The artwork alongside is our “Maxed Out” tribute to it.
Where to next?
Tune to another decade
Or stay in the 60s: its designs are just below.
Wear the Decade
Eleven designs from the sixties: five Flag Series, five Neon Car Meets, and one Racing Patches, patched like the back of a race-team jacket. Hoodie, two weights of sweatshirt, or a tee.
- 1960sBuild 02 / 11
Flag Series
Mustang GT Highland Green
Part of the Flag Series, from Dean's Classic Cars.
Mid-Weight Sweatshirt£54.99 - 1960sBuild 03 / 11
Flag Series
Samba Twenty Three Window
Part of the Flag Series, from Dean's Classic Cars.
T-Shirt£34.99 - 1960sBuild 04 / 11
Flag Series
P1800 West Bromwich Built
Part of the Flag Series, from Dean's Classic Cars.
T-Shirt£34.99 - 1960sBuild 05 / 11
Flag Series
500 D Celestial Blue
Part of the Flag Series, from Dean's Classic Cars.
Heavyweight Sweatshirt£64.99 - 1960sBuild 06 / 11
Neon Car Meets
MGB Roadster Hedgerow Lane
Part of the Neon Car Meets line, from Dean's Classic Cars.
Hoodie£64.99 - 1960sBuild 07 / 11
Neon Car Meets
Mustang GT Diner Nights
Part of the Neon Car Meets line, from Dean's Classic Cars.
T-Shirt£34.99 - 1960sBuild 08 / 11
Neon Car Meets
Split Screen Sunset Surf
Part of the Neon Car Meets line, from Dean's Classic Cars.
Mid-Weight Sweatshirt£54.99 - 1960sBuild 09 / 11
Neon Car Meets
E Type Cliff Road
Part of the Neon Car Meets line, from Dean's Classic Cars.
Hoodie£64.99 - 1960sBuild 10 / 11
Neon Car Meets
Cooper S Mill Cobbles
Part of the Neon Car Meets line, from Dean's Classic Cars.
Heavyweight Sweatshirt£64.99 - 1960sBuild 11 / 11
Racing Patches
Cortina Paddock Pass Seven
A number 7 Mk1 Cortina saloon racer on a paddock pass, patched like a race-team jacket.
T-Shirt£34.99
Buy opens our store, ricki-robin.store, in a new tab.
Mind How You Go
That’s the sixties, the decade everyone remembers. Next door it all gets a bit browner, and a lot funnier.
Waiting for you in the 1970s
