Brave New Worlds

At the moment the car world is in a state of flux probably not seen since the 1920s. The shift away from internal combustion to a variety of other drivetrain technologies gathers pace almost by the week (an all-electric car was the UK’s bestseller in September 2021 and there was no Ford in the top ten list!) and is running towards its legislated end game come the 2030s. In the meantime the shift away from diesel – once seemingly poised to dominate – continues, while buyers and drivers try and keep up to date with ethanol blends in the petrol and increasing numbers of low-emissions zones which ban, restrict or charge diesels in urban areas. The continuing rise of China as a manufacturing nation brings new marques to the table and seemingly unflappable truths such as the primacy of German marques and that Korean cars would only ever be ‘white goods’ are crumbling. The very way in which we use or even own our cars is changing.

Of course, change has always happened at some rate or other, and there have always been cars that blazed a trail, be it taking an existing idea into a new market, dropping an entirely fresh concept onto an unprepared world or taking a notion that had been tried already and finally making it stick. What better time to look at some of these trendsetters?

MINI

Alec Issigonis’ pint-sized marvel was not the first widely-made front-wheel drive car. Citroën had done that. It wasn’t even the first to have the engine mounted transversely – something done by DKW before the Second World War. It certainly wasn’t the first car designed for congested cities, as witnessed by a clutch of small Fiats from the fertile pen of Dante Giacosa. But it was the first to bring all these elements together and add not only an incredible degree of space-utilisation that made other city cars (and even some ‘proper’ small saloons) seem mean and pokey but astoundingly good roadholding. This was all bound up in a chic, ultra-modern