Car Madness

Mini

I'm starting with the one everyone loves, y'know, from the Itallian Job. The mini, which was a nickname by the way. It came from the name Morris Mini Minor.

Morris and Austin had just merged, so there where Morris and Austin branded versions of the mini, called the Morris Mini Minor, and the Austin Seven.

Those names where rubbish, which would be why "mini" caught on, and eventually became its own brand.

What I have to say about the mini is, I love it because it was so different and advanced at the time. I don't like front-wheel drive, but I make an exception for the mini, and maybe the Citoren C1...

It was a great little piece of engineering. It made the front engined, front wheel drive layout work. (Previous attempts had been a little... dangerous.)

It was a truly great car. A real legend. And yet a complete failure.

Nobody ever made money on it. From the very outset, it was losing Morris/Austin £10 for every mini they sold, and it never got much better than that.

If it seems like I'm insulting the mini now, remember that Bugatti Veyrons are sold at a massive, massive loss... about a million quid I think. Bargain? That's an even greater bit of engineering.

I'm not insulting the mini, but I am gonna insult just about everyone involved in producing it.

Legend has it that the mini's awesomeness is a direct result of giving one guy complete control of the project. Alec Issigonis. It's my opinion that the car would've been better if he had less control. And he took way too much credit for the mini.

The concept of it was his, and it was brilliant. There's no denying that, but it wasn't him that made it work.

Alec was a massive dick head. He wouldn't admit to any flaws in his design, or let anyone change anything. That's how the mini actually made it into production with rainwater draining into the car rather than onto the road, even though the engineers pointed that out when it was still just a bunch if sketches on the drawing board.

Alec kept a pair of Wellington boots in his own mini and wore them while driving in rainy weather. And he flat-out denied that the car leaked.

In my opinion the mini was the beginning of the British car industry's decline into crappness and failure.

Nobody's gonna agree with me on that, cos the mini is everyone's favourite British car. It's incredibly popular.

But look back at the Austin Seven, and the Morris Minor... Not the minis that went by those names, but the older cars that the mini stole its names from. They where both very successful, though not technologically advanced like the mini was.

The Austin Seven was like the British Model-T Ford: You didn't had to be incredibly rich to own one, though it was incredibly slow... It brought motoring to the masses.

And the Morris Minor, sold to the same kind of market, with similar success, was designed by... Alec Issigonis.

He had wanted to make the Minor front-wheel drive, like he got to do later with the mini, but Morris had him on a leash back then, and made him stick to more conventional and cheap to build layout. The Minor wasn't technologically remarkable in any way, but it was a massive success. It made money.

Mr. Morris and Mr. Austin where still in charge of their companies back then, but they had both retired, and their old companies had merged by the time the mini was conceived.

That merger was the beginning of British Leyland, a famously tangled up mess of british brands competing against each other while Ford and VW and Datsun and Toyota took control of the market, using something called business sense.

Something that BL lost prettymuch exactly when Mr. Morris and Mr. Austin quit, leaving their rival companies to merge and then continue being rivals.

Seriously, Austin and Morris both worked on developing the mini, never telling the other when they changed something. It caused all kinds of problems as the two prototypes became very different, like two branches of evolution.

And despite all the retardedness, the mini kept on going, until Rover finally stopped making it in... 1999, I think. It might have been later than that.

It launched in... 1960, maybe. Thats an amazingly long run.

I don't know how BMW got the mini, and made it it's own brand, (that business sense thing again...) but they moved in to one of Rover's old factories, and started knocking out the new mini... sorry, MINI. BMW insist it should be all caps for some reason.

The beemer's great and all... Classic British design with modern German engineering. Nothing like the old mini, but still pretty damn good. Anyhow, the MINI's not the car I'm trying to write about here.

I still love the mini. It's development and marketing where retarded and laughable, but the car was brilliant. Really brilliant, and it's the car I actually give a damn about.

It's tempting to think that those engineers behind the scenes, and Alec the massive dick head... Maybe the car was all they gave a damn about too?

Maybe with boring old money-obsessed Mr. Morris and Mr. Austin gone, their companies where free to descend into car madness...?