GHOST OF THE MINI

The Mini’s 61-year legacy is remarkable for a car modestly conceived simply to be cheap and efficient. Petrol rationing caused by the Suez Crisis led to Brits clamouring for more economical modes of transport, so in March 1957, BMC Chairman Leonard Lord tasked Alec Issigonis with devising a “proper small car” to force the expanding cluster of tiny bubble cars off the road.

Launched just two years and five months later, the Mini was a genuine revolution. With its transverse-mounted four-pot engine driving the front wheels and innovative packaging, it soon sent designers from rival manufacturers scurrying back to their drawing boards. It set a new blueprint for the way the world thought about small cars, which was quite an achievement given that the Mini was essentially the work of one man who dictated the car’s specifics with the kind of arrogance that seems inconceivable today. “I’m the last of the Bugattis,” he famously said in reference to Ettore Bugatti. “A man who designed whole cars. Now committees do the work.”

Nevertheless, his autocratic approach worked. After a slow start, the car became a massive hit, and instead of being influenced by the mainstream, it changed what the mainstream was. It’s no surprise, then, that ghost of the Mini would linger in the firm’s cars for decades afterwards. Here, we look back at some of the most significant, beginning with the car that started it all.

GENESIS POINT: MINI

Issigonis had many of the ideas for the Mini up his sleeve before he started. The Austin Lightweight Special race car he built during the late 1930s fostered a passion for saving weight and even featured independent rubber suspension. And although his first complete road car, the Morris Minor, was rushed into production without many of his planned innovations, he did create a front-wheel-drive prototype version before leaving for