Six key things about the original Mini you need to know for its birthday

Monday, 26 August 2019

The original Mini is 60 years old today - it was officially announced to the public today in 1959 - and in those sixty years has become beloved for its eager handling, cute looks and sheer sense of fun.

But did you know that all of that was pretty much the exact opposite of how the Mini was conceived and designed?

The two main men behind the Mini were BMC chairman Leonard Lord and design genius Alec Issigonis, both men well known for their drive, determination, fiercely practical natures and total lack of humour or whimsey.

No, the Mini wasn't meant to be cute, delightful or fun - it was intended to be almost brutally practical and it was simply a strange and fortuitous side effect of that fiercely practical drive behind it that saw it also look charmingly cute and be an absolute blast to drive.

* One of Britain's most popular cars, the Morris Minor turns 70

* Five of the weirdest Minis ever made**

No music, no talking - just watch and listen to the Mini cementing its legend at the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally.

So to celebrate the Mini's 60th birthday, here are six Mini facts that formed the fantastic Mini - happy birthday Mini!

It was conceived to rid the roads of German bubble cars

Leonard Lord, who was the head of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) between 1952 and 1961 hated the small German bubble cars that had flooded onto British roads following the 1956 fuel shortages caused by Suez Crisis.

He hated them so much he was hell-bent on eliminating them from British roads by designing a 'proper miniature car' that he determined should be contained within a box that measured 10x4x4 feet (3x1.2x1.2 metres), that the passenger accommodation should occupy 6 feet (1.8 m) of the 10-foot (3.0 m) length and the engine, for reasons of cost, should be an existing unit. Starting to sound familiar?

Enter Alec Issigonis who had started working at BMC again in 1955, designing a range of 'technically advanced' family cars that were to be as innovative as his previous design for the company - the Morris Minor.

Inspired by Leonard Lord's hatred of German 'bubble cars' the Mini would go on to be a legend.

Issigonis was working on three cars, but after Lord's decision to create a bubble car competitor he was told to concentrate on the smallest - the one that fit into Lord's 10 foot box and gave birth ADO15, the design that would become the first Mini.

Maximum interior space

Although the Mini is highly regarded for its cute looks and iconic exterior design (Rover actually trademarked the design in the 1990s), this played almost no part in its original conception, as the Mini was literally designed from the inside out.

Maximising internal space was the main driver when designing the Mini, so it made sense the the external form would simply be a function of that. With no external boot, Issigonis pushed the Mini's wheels out to the extreme edges of the body and with the other components packed into the minimum space possible, more than 80 per cent of the floor space was freed up for occupants.

A tiny wheel at each corner, transverse front-mounted engine - the Mini was all about interior space.

All while almost staying within Lord's mandated 10x4x4 box - 2-inches was added to its width during development, while it crept very slightly outside the box in other dimensions as well.

Keeping it even this close still required a radical re-think of those 'other components' - most notably the engine, suspension and even the wheels - as well as leading to things like sliding windows to allow the use of a single-skin doors for more elbow room (and reduce costs), while the bracing bar across the door was adapted to be a storage space in the doors that, allegedly, Issigonis sized precisely to carry the ingredients of a dry martini, his favourite drink.

Transverse engine

To keep costs to a minimum (the Mini was, after all, conceived to be a budget micro car competitor) Lord decreed that it should use an existing engine.

This led to one of the Mini's greatest innovations when the design team decided to mount the venerable BMC A-series engine transversely, making it front-wheel drive. The Mini also featured a four-speed manual transmission packaged into the engine's sump, sharing lubrication and enabling even more space saving.

Alec Issigonis and his single biggest innovation - the decision to mount the A-series engine transversely set the template for every small FWD car to follow.

What would come as a result of maximising internal space would end up creating the template for pretty much all the small FWD cars that would come after the Mini.

Well, the transverse engine/FWD thing, that is - the transmission in the sump thing wasn't so widely copied, and the Mini's engine arrangement did also throw up a few ongoing issues - mainly the location meant that the entire ignition system was exposed to the elements through the grille, meaning that a bit of rain could disable a Mini entirely when water would seep into the distributor.

An inexpensive (and quite ingenious) fix was the positioning of a small plastic shield behind the grille. Sure, it was crude and cheap, but it actually worked…

Those wheels may have been tiny, but with one literally at each corner, the Mini was a giant killer on the track.

10-inch wheels

Issigonis realised early on in the Mini's design that simply pushing the wheels out to each corner wouldn't be enough - the wheels themselves would have to be smaller to get the interior space he wanted. So to this end he decided on a maximum wheel size of just eight inches.

The biggest problem here, however, was that no-one actually made an 8-inch wheel or tyre, so BMC reached out to Dunlop to develop both specifically for the Mini. And Dunlop said no.

A compromise was reached, however, and the Mini was eventually born wearing its now-iconic 10-inch wheels.

Rubber cone suspension

The quest for interior space also led to an unusual and innovative suspension design, but it wasn't the one the Mini would be most famous for - that was a compromise.

Issigonis and engineer Alex Moulton initially planned for the Mini to have an interconnected fluid system (like Citroen), but the Mini's short development time meant it wouldn't be ready.

The hinged number plate was a clever idea to allow for bigger loads, but the potential for death stopped it from catching on.

Instead, Moulton designed a system that used rubber cones built into the subframe instead of springs that not only saved space, but also gave the Mini its famed 'go-kart' handling. And the associated grim ride…

To address the firm, bouncy ride Moulton and Issigonis would continue to develop their initial concept, which would eventually become BMC's hydrolastic suspension system that would first appear in the Morris 1100 in 1962.

The Mini would be updated to get the hydrolastic system in 1964 and while this would improve the ride, it also added to both the weight and production cost of the Mini.

Hydrolastic suspension was dropped from the Mini in 1971 and the rubber cone system was reintroduced and would stick around for the rest of the original car's production life.

Not all of its clever design features caught on though

While it featured more than a few innovative and even downright revolutionary ideas, not all of Issigonis's innovations went on to wider use in the industry - most notably the clever hinged number plate that would drop down when the boot lid was open, so it could still be seen when carrying a load to big to close the boot on.

While this seemed rather clever, it was quickly discovered that exhaust gasses were sucked into the Mini's cabin when the boot was open. Which was not exactly ideal.

BMC's solution? It simply removed the hinge on the number plate so people wouldn't leave it open…