BOOK OF THE DAY: JOHN S DOYLEreviews Mini: An Intimate BiographyBy Christy Campbell Virgin Books 296pp, £12.99
‘OUR MOTOR cars have got to be small . . . there can never be sufficient room on the roads of this island for hordes of vehicles equal in size to the present transatlantic automobile.”
So said Motormagazine in 1956, initiating a discussion in Britain that still has to take place here.
The countries of mainland Europe already had their postwar Volkswagens, Fiat 500s and Citroën 2CVs. For the new challenge brought about by petrol shortages after the Suez crisis, the British Motor Corporation (BMC) went to the man who had designed the Morris Minor in 1948: Alec Issigonis, born in Smyrna in 1906.
The Austin Se7en/Morris Mini-Minor appeared in 1959.
Issigonis, a classic English boffin despite or perhaps because of his Greek and Bavarian origins, believed in austerity. Engineered by Jack Daniels, his assistant on the Minor, the car had a wheel at each corner in order to fit the largest amount into the smallest space: two people in front, two behind, and a little luggage, in a length of 10ft. Issigonis believed the most basic seats were fine, because drivers needed to be “uncomfortable to stay alert”, and a radio was “a vulgar household appliance”.
Among the car’s innovations were the engine placed sideways and driving the tiny front wheels. The rubber suspension developed by Alex Moulton gave the car great road holding and Issigonis reprimanded those who found it stiff: “A firm ride is preferable to a mere feeling of physical comfort.”
There were sliding windows at the front and pull wires to open the door; the lack of a window mechanism allowed plenty of elbow room, and large pockets at the base of the doors for holding bottles of milk.
At £495, the equivalent of 38 weeks of the average industrial wage, the car sold well. It handled like a racing car, and could go at more than 70mph (113km/h), but used little fuel. But because it was expensive to make and the price had been set to undercut Ford’s Anglia, BMC lost about £30 on each Mini it sold.
The economy picked up and postwar glumness turned into swinging London. The Mini, originally a car for housewives, the impoverished young and the sons of indulgent mothers, became tops with the pop (The Beatles, Marianne Faithfull) and the posh (Tony Armstrong-Jones).
And when the snortingly fast Cooper S version won the Monte Carlo rally for Belfast man Paddy Hopkirk in 1963, the car became an emblem of British renewal. It kept going for an extraordinary 41 years, and more than five million were sold; BMW’s flashier version appeared in 2000.
Campbell’s book is full of information about a complex story. The “intimate” of his title suggests that the famous sex life enjoyed by many in the Mini is to be explored, but there is little of that. There are some nice photographs, but more images of the cars and designs mentioned would have been useful.
We Irish had our love affair with the Mini too, before the SUV arrived. For decades Irish roads policy has been decided as if we had a motor industry to protect, when all we have is a body of people in suits who sell cars.
That is a pity, because now that hard times have returned we are well placed to develop a first-class public transport system, take all those oversized cars off Irish roads and replace them with fewer, and smaller, cars along the lines of the Mini.
Policymakers should read this book and be inspired.
John S Doyle is a freelance journalist