SENSATIONS OF THE ’70s

Few would deny that the original Mini was Britain’s biggest automotive icon of the swinging ’60s. It might have got off to a shaky start saleswise, but once it appeared in glossy magazines being driven by the rich and famous on the fashionable streets of London, there was no stopping it. From Twiggy to The Beatles, everyone wanted a slice of ’60s-style Mini action. The question for British Leyland, however, was how to maintain that momentum in the decade that was to follow.

The answer lay in the new flat-fronted Clubman range, which arrived in 1969 alongside the sporting derivative shown here: the 1275GT. It was a way of replacing the ’60s sensation that was the Mini Cooper with something more in tune with ’70s style; and it went on to be a big hit, with 110,673 examples being snapped up during its 11-year career. By the time the last one was produced in 1980,