We've talked about the revolution of the car industry that was the Volkswagen Beetle so today, we're gonna talk about another revolutionary car that was from the height of European car manufacturing and its across the pond of Germany in right ol' England and that's the Mini.
Pics from left to right, top to bottom in a zigzag pattern: Original Mini -> Half-cut of the Mini to show how it looks like internally -> Mini Traveller -> Mini Cooper Works S -> Mini running up the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally -> Mini fighting for positions with a Lotus Cortina at a BTCC race
Britain and Europe in general was still reeling from the effects of post-WWII but the car industry was steadily bouncing back. As technology improved so did engines get bigger but.. Problem. In 1952, the Suez Crisis basically halted all fuel imports into Europe and the one struck the worst was Britain. Not only that, the economic situation in Britain wasn't good still thus everyone would literally buy bubble cars from Germany. However, the then-boss of British Motoring Company/BMC (which would be British Leyland later on), Leonard Lord, hated the bubble cars calling them utter garbage and not even fit to be a vehicle thus he decided to change the game and make a small car that people really want to drive. Lord would immediately invite the Morris Minor's designer, Alec Issigonis to head the project.
Alec and his team of engineers would design three prototypes ranging from a big car XC9001 to the smallest car XC9003. Upon reading the brief from Lord again then did they realize that they were going into the right direction about designing a small car thus they scrapped all the other drawings and kept the XC9003 concept. The team would scalp and work on the designs further and would submit for review by Lord on 17th July 1957 and he liked it too much that he immediately greenlit for the project to go on and renamed the project as ADO15.
Alec, listening to the brief, switched the engineering methods that wern't seen before. Back then, cars mostly have their engine layouts in a longitudinal layout but that would also cause the bonnet to be extremely long just to compensate for the engine placement. Plus, most cars of that time were also rear-wheel drive meaning that the differential will be at the back thus a hump would be needed to be made on the floorboard which would eat up rear space area. Alec then came up with an ingenious idea of sticking everything in one area instead of separating them both. He would stick an inline-4 engine horizontally with the gearbox and have the drivetrain at the front also as a front-wheel drive system. This also had an added effect that the car can be short as the engine is now horizontal rather than longitudinal and the car's now also wider. Also, unlike other cars of its time where a separated chassis was still the norm, the ADO15 concept was one of the few that utilized a full monocoque chassis which was indeed revolutionary back then. To complement the car, they initially tested it out with a 948cc 4cyl engine which made 38hp but the team determined that the engine was too powerful for its purpose and thus, they destroked the engine and in return it made 848cc and a reduced power of 32hp and from a speed drop of 80mph/129kmh to 75mph/121kmh. By 1958, everything was ready for production and off to the factory it went for it to be built.
Morris was the first company to be set up to build the car and it was rather quick to build instead that after just passing the production calls, Morris had already built over 3000 units and BMC was ready to reveal the car to the general public in April 1959. BMC would send 2,000 cars across the world to promote it whilst keeping 1,000 for national reviews. The car would be an instant success as it was tiny thus easy to drive and it was agile too due to the width. BMC would make 1.1 million models with both Morris and Austin making the Mini just within a span of 1959-1967 and that wasn't the end of it but would only be the beginning.
Alec's good friend, the boss of Cooper Cars, John Cooper received a model of the Mini and he immediately liked it. He immediately saw the potential of the car and knew it would be a success for racing but as he didn't have the connection to do it, he went and find Alec for assistance. Alec initially disliked the idea but after the insistence from Alec that it would work, they would appeal to the top brass of the BMC management who, surprisingly, agreed to let Cooper run the program thus off to work the two went. They immediately increase the displacement of the engine from the 848cc to 1L and bumped power to 55hp. They also swapped the brake system from drum brakes to frontal disc brake which was rare at that time. BMC would make 1000 of these specced cars for homologation under Group 2 rules and immediately toss it into racing once the details are done by 1961 and would also rename the model as the "Mini Cooper". Straight off the gate, it was a success. It entered into the British Touring Car Championship/BTCC and would win the very season in 1961 despite facing heavier and faster cars. It would also race and dominate other race series overseas besides the BTCC. 1963 would see an upgrade of the Cooper with a displacement bump yet again to 1071cc and another power upgrade to 65hp. This time, they took it rallying and unsurprisingly, it won again this time due to its agility, lightweight and stability round corners.
Whilst the racing thing was going on, BMC wasn't slouching either. Noticing the rise in sales of the Mini, they started to experiment where they could expand one car into many other models and that, they did. From the normal supermini concept, they spawned many different things from wagons like the Traveller and Clubman models to the pickups and panel van models to a coupe and even cabriolet models. BMC would switch name to British Leyland in 1975 but nothing much has changed as the Mini kept on being produced the same method albeit abit of small changes here and there. Austin and Rover would merge in 1982 to form BL's subdivision, Austin-Rover and with Morris also being culled on the same year, Austin-Rover was left as the only maker to produce the Mini. However, Austin-Rover would once again split leaving Rover to be alone once again and with Austin being culled. Now, Rover was the only one left to produce the Mini.
Rover would keep building the Mini but they hit into financial troubles after the dissolution of BL. BMW came and bail Rover out in 1990 thus Rover kept on working on the Mini. However, the situation still wasn't good as Rover was still losing money and by 2000, BMW had enough and killed off Rover entirely. Despite that, they liked the Mini soo much that they actually kept the rights of the Mini namesake for future use and BMW eventually did revive the name as its own subbrand under BMW and rebuild a whole new car with the name. They would also ask John Cooper's estate to use his name for their souped up variants of the Mini to pay tribute to the guy that made the Mini famous in motorsports. The original Mini would be built from 1959-2000 with over 5.3 million units total.
Despite not being built as long as the Volkswagen Beetle, its the same as iconic as the "Bug" as it changed how cars will be made in the future and its also iconic in its own way in the movie world and racing world with movies and TV shows utilizing it like "The Italian Job" and "Mr.Bean".
