The Origins of the Classic Mini

What amazing foresight:
It is well known by the majority of Mini Fanatics that the Mini was a car that you either love or hate. Luckily the people at the start of the Mini's life loved it....Pininfarina once joked to Issigonis: "Why don't you style the Mini a bit?", to which Issigonis quickly replied "It'll still be fashionable when I'm dead and gone". That really shows what incredible foresight Alec had.Built as direct competition to the bubble cars that were becoming increasingly popular due to the wake of the Suez crisis of 1956, which had caused petrol rationing throughout Britain. The need to conserve petrol had allowed these 'bubble' cars to take a hold of the car buying public......the Mini was built to 'drive those bubble cars off the road'. Fragments in time, the lifestory of the Mini.....a brief History. Hard to believe that all this started from a pencil drawing on a table cloth in a restaurant. Read below to find out how the Mini story came in to being.
Alec IssigonisAlec Issigonis works on derivatives of experimental vehicles, in 1956 Alec works on the XC9000 a rear wheel drive car with hydrolastic suspension and powered by a 1.5 litre over head cam all aluminium engine.In July 1957, within four months of the XC9000, Alec quickly mocks up a wooden model of his latest design called the XC9003. With a marked difference in the car length and height, it could be stated that this model bears an uncanny resemblance to the MINI (ADO 15 project).In October 1957, only eight months after putting pen to paper, or as Alec IssigonisAlec often did, put pen to newspaper...napkin or anything else easily at hand.....the first two experimental ADO15 test cars went on the road. Testing was mainly at night to avoid any press with a handy camera being present.

NOTE: At this point the ADO15 test vehicles had the famous east-west engine layout, but it was turned exactly 180 degrees to the final model. That is, the manifold was at the front with the carb's and, the sparks plugs were found to the rear of the engine bay. This layout was dropped early on in testing due to the carb's icing up in the winter months. It is also quite interesting to note that even these first test vehicles could reach speeds of over 90 m.p.h. which was very quick in those days....and set the scene for even faster Minis to come.The daunting task that Alec IssigonisAlec had to squeeze four passengers, luggage and an engine into less than 10 foot was realised and then solve in true Issigonis style with the 1957 solution of mounting transversely...and putting the gear shafts beneath the crankshaft. In the first concept there were only two 'step-down' gears.During the latter months of development the Mini underwent a 'widening' change similar to that of its predecessor the Morris Minor. It is a little known fact that the early prototypes were very fast and as well as reducing the engine size from 948cc to 848cc the ADO15 was widened by 2" (50mm). This small percentage increase in frontal area reduced the overall speed down by a staggering 18 m.p.h.Over the months that led to the important trial in July of 1958 Issigonis and his small team of designers, which included chief draftsmen and a team of draftsmen including a handful of engineering students worked remarkable hours....drawing by day and testing by night. The actual cost of the design work was incredibly small by any standards, even in its day £100,000 . This would be unheard of today, with multi-million pound budgets.In July 1958 Sir Leonard made his historic run around the works grounds, the car itself had been one of the prototypes and had covered some 30,000 miles. But after only 5 minutes he returned to an expectant Issigonis and made an historic decision that would change motoring history. It has been written that Sir Leonard stepped out of the Mini and said "Alec, this is it, I want it in production within twelve months", to which Issigonis replied "Sir Leonard, this will cost many millions of pounds"....to which Sir Leonard exclaimed "Don't you worry about that, I shall sign the cheque's, you just get on with getting the thing to work". The rest is history.

Text by David & Gillian Morton our Cooper and S registrar
Images by kind permission of MINI press