Great Garages THE MINI/MINI CELEBRATES THE BIG 60

Devotees love their MINIs in many ways.

A frequent thought is that they’re just so cute and lovable.

But that wasn’t the normal take in 1959, when Alec Issigonis designed the first Mini for British Motor Corporation (BMC), later part of British Leyland. The eminently pragmatic Turkish/ Greek mechanical engineer and racer had spent his formative years at British manufacturers, Humber, Morris, Alvis and then Morris again. He was an often crusty man of considerable achievement; he did not design cute or lovable things.

“When the wraps came off the first Mini, 60 years ago this year, there was never any question that the car was cute or lovable,” says Giles Chapman, the distinguished British automotive writer whose most recent work is MINI: 60 Years from Motorbooks. “If you’d even suggested that to its dogmatic designer, he’d have shot you a look of such withering, intense scorn you’d have felt ashamed for being so soppy.”

Soppiness wasn’t signature Issigonis. In the tradition of economy-car pioneers as varied as the Fiat