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    Mini
    Mini
    Mini
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    Mini

    By Gillian Bardsley

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    About this ebook

    The Mini, now an emblem of the Swinging Sixties, was in fact the product of an age of austerity and shortage, a simple design intended to make motoring more accessible and affordable for the average family. Ironically, it would become something very different: a modern, classless style icon that appealed across the boundaries of social status, age and gender and lent its name to everything from fashion to furniture. Using illustrations from the archives of the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust, Gillian Bardsley here tells the Mini's story, from the inspired conception of designer Alec Issigonis, through the car's shaky infancy and up to its glorious heyday when it was beloved of film stars, royalty and the public, as well as having a prominent presence in motorsport.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateAug 10, 2013
    ISBN9780747814115
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      Book preview

      Mini - Gillian Bardsley

      WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

      THE MINI IS UNUSUAL for being closely associated with one individual in an industry whose products are usually the result of complex, and largely anonymous, teamwork. Yet the name of Sir Alec Issigonis is still recognised, for he was possibly the British motor industry’s first and only celebrity.

      His future status as the creator of a British icon, epitomising the ‘youth’ culture which dominated the 1960s, was not obvious in his origins. Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis was born on 18 November 1906 in the busy Turkish port of Smyrna (now called Izmir). He was the only child of Constantine Issigonis, a marine engineer of Greek origin, and his wife, Hulda, who belonged to a German brewing family. Despite their ancestry, both his parents were born and raised in Turkey, but to complicate things further, they were also staunch Anglophiles. Constantine had spent some time in England as a young man and been given British citizenship. So young Alec was given a private English education and instilled with loyalty to a country that he had not had the opportunity to visit.

      Alec Issigonis, Morris Motors project engineer, at Cowley in 1946. This was the period during which the Morris Minor, which established his reputation, was being designed.

      The comfortable way of life enjoyed by Smyrna’s expatriate community was rudely shattered by the First World War in which Turkey chose the losing side. As a consequence, international war was followed by civil war, and in 1922 the Royal Navy arrived to evacuate the British community. While they waited on Malta as refugees, Constantine fell gravely ill and died. Hulda and her son, now sixteen years old, crossed to Sicily and travelled the length of Europe to reach their new home in England.

      Here Issigonis resumed his education, completing an engineering diploma at Battersea Polytechnic in 1928 and gradually making his way into the motor industry. Though the British economy was struggling during this period, the motor car had only been invented around forty years previously, and the industry which had grown up around it proved more resilient than many older sectors. In 1936 Issigonis was offered an opportunity as a suspension designer with Morris Motors, one of the leading motor manufacturers of the time, based at Cowley near Oxford. Two years earlier, the firm’s founder, William Morris, had been created Lord Nuffield in recognition of his great philanthropy.

      Constantine, Alec and Hulda Issigonis are fifth to seventh from left in this picture, together with their extended family in Turkey, c. 1910.

      As his career began to take off, Issigonis dedicated his leisure time to motor sport, modifying a series of Austin Sevens. He spent much time both as competitor and spectator at racing circuits and hill-climbs. In 1934 he began work with his friend, George Dowson, to construct an innovative racing car completely from scratch. The resulting ‘Lightweight Special’ took five years to build entirely by hand and began to compete in 1938. Motorsport was suspended for the duration of the war from 1939, but the car returned once peace was established, and enjoyed several more years of successful competition before Issigonis and Dowson retired from the amateur racing scene in 1948.

      With the outbreak of the Second World War, Issigonis, as part of a reserved occupation, was officially assigned to the design of military vehicles. At the same time, the vice-chairman of Morris Motors, Sir Miles Thomas, encouraged him to work on ideas for a new small car. Though production and design of civilian vehicles was banned until 1944, most motor manufacturers continued to work discreetly on post-war designs in the hope that they could gain an advantage over their rivals when the war was over.

      Alec Issigonis, driving his modified Austin Seven Sports near his home in

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