MINI
In the 1950s the British Motor Corporation (formed by the merger of the Austin and Morris brands) was still highly profitable and adept at production. In 1956 BMC boss Leonard Lord brought designer Alec Issigonis (1906–88) back from Alvis to create a new range of popular cars.
When the bungled Suez invasion led to an oil boycott of Britain by Arab states and petrol rationing in the UK the first priority became a really small new car. Suspension designer Alex Moulton (1920–) recalled driving to meet Issigonis in a single-cylinder three-wheeler Heinkel bubble car (‘simply a device for getting 60 miles to the gallon’). Issigonis sniffed and revealed that Lord had asked him to design a real economy car, but ‘whatever it is, it won’t have one cylinder and three wheels. It’s going to have four cylinders and four wheels.’
The key to the package lay in the use of front-wheel drive, new small wheels to save space, and a transverse engine with integrated gearbox ‘sharing the same bathwater’. All these were then ambitious steps for a budget car. It is often said that great designs arise from tough constraints and the target for the Mini was a compact four-seater within a length of only 10ft (3.04m). The design team recalled that it had had to fight for every quarter inch.
The Mini was designed by Issigonis with a few trusted intermediaries, who later remarked, ‘We were there to do things his way.’ In turn, the Mini gave rise to Issigonis’s bigger and immensely successful Austin 1100. One colleague recalled that, ‘None of them were committee motorcars. Just one man breaking all the rules. It’s not cheap to work that way, but he revolutionized the world’s motoring.’
The expressed external seams of the Mini simplified welding and anticipated the ‘Pompidou Centre aesthetic’ by externalizing technical features that were formerly buried. Les wisely, Issigonis also ignored engineering convention for the underbody and early models filled up with rainwater.