The Original MINI

I’ve always loved the original Mini, even though I’ve never had an opportunity to drive one. I always imagined it would be like my old Maruti 800 – a very tiny, basic, front drive car which fits like a glove around the driver, only much better to drive, throw around corners and indulge in the kind of driving malarkey that would generally be frowned upon – a sort of a go-kart with a roof. But the new one has a problem you see.

Though it’s a very good car, it's  rather big and though it looks like a brilliant modern interpretation of the original car, somewhere the Mini ethos seems to be missing. And after having driven almost all of the current Mini range in India – the Cooper S, the Cooper Convertible (Read Mini Cooper S & Convertible First Drive) and the Countryman (Read : Mini Contryman Road Test), my disillusionment is complete.

The original Mini on the other hand is the personification of simplicity. What started out in life as a compact, economical car for the masses ended up becoming a cult classic. From race tracks to rally circuits to even the silver screen – it was used to pull off one of the most iconic bank robberies from movie history, for crying out loud (and I mean the dainty little car Michael Caine drove, not the chubby remake of the car Mark Wahlberg drove in the humdrum remake of the movie).

The formula was quite simple – a liquid-cooled transverse mounted four-cylinder under the hood powering the front wheels, just about enough space for four people and some luggage, cheap to buy and cheap to run – and boy, did it run! What it lacked in outright speed, it made up for it in the way it handled, doing the metaphor, “like a go-kart with a roof” (overused to describe the way it drove), justice more than enough times. And this meant, in the 60s, you didn’t have to be a Lord or a film actor with a Jag to have fun on wheels. All you needed was a Mini.

Not only did the original Mini capture the imagination of the public like nothing else before it, it also influenced generations of car makers after it. The rear-wheel drive recipe, which had been around since the invention of the automobile, quickly fell out of favour for the front-wheel drive system Mini made popular, and almost every standard passenger car you see on the road today has its drivetrain layout based on the original Mini’s.

The original Mini was a marvel of packaging. With the entire drivetrain fitted into the confines of the engine bay, almost 80 per cent of the car’s floorpan was dedicated to the task of accommodating passengers and luggage. Sliding windows eliminated the need for window winders, which in turn made the doors thin, thereby maximising interior space. Even though it might have been a miser when it came to space, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t designed with a little bit of cheekiness. The Mini’s designer, Sir Alex Issigonis, reportedly sized the door pockets to fit a bottle of Gordon’s Gin – you just can’t design a car in such rock star fashion in today’s day and age.

The Mini spawned many strange and interesting variants such as the Clubman, the larger Countryman, a van, a pick-up and even the Moke. And let’s not forget the racing version as well, the Mini Cooper – a car that sports real racing pedigree. John Cooper, a close friend of Issigonis, was responsible for this race-bred version that featured an upsized engine for more power and tweaks to the suspension for improved handling. And it was with competition prepared Mini Coopers that Paddy Hopkirk, Timo Makinen and Rauno Aaltonen won the coveted Monte Carlo Rally on separate occasions in the sixties.

The original Mini lived a long life. From its inception in 1959 till 2000, the car went through seven iterations, but remained pretty much unchanged. The new Mini designed by BMW took over the reins from this little wondercar from 2001 onwards and while it did move the Mini brand firmly into the 21st century, somewhere the purity of the original concept has been lost. And for this, we, lovers of the automobile and worshippers at the temple of internal combustion, will always mourn deeply. For there was never anything like the original Mini,  nor will there ever be again.