As the Mini Minor turns 50, vintage car expert Manvendra Singh Barwani talks about why the mini became a major part of car history
As the Mini Minor turns 50, vintage car expert Manvendra Singh Barwani talks about why the mini became a major part of car history
It was small, it was fast for its time, and it has just turned 50 and is still popular among car lovers. It's what the Beatles drove. And Mr Bean. It's the Mini, the small car that made it big.
Designed by Sir Alec Issigonis for the British Motor Corporation, this very small car, which was launched in London on August 1959, went on to become a popular British motor car aimed at wooing the middle class and the elite alike with various models.
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Small frame, big names
Though it looked petite, it was quite spacious inside. The interesting aspect of the first models of the Austin Seven and Morris Mini Minor was that they came without radio, and the simplistic dashboard just
had a speedometer, odometer, and a gas gauge. If a buyer wanted an interior heater, it was considered to be an add-on.
It is said that the Mini didn't do too well when it was first launched, and sales picked up only after Queen Elizabeth took a ride in it. Sales multiplied. The popular colour scheme in England those days for the Mini was to paint the Union Jack on the top of the car. In the 60s, after Beatles' manager Brian Epstein apparently gifted the group a Mini Cooper S, George Harrison's Mini had psychedelic images painted on it, as well as Sanskrit mantras. The same car was later seen in the Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour.
Nearer home
India was not left untouched by the Mini charm. "Quite a few, the Mini Cooper, Mini Morris and Austin series, came into our country through the British diplomats in the 1959. While the neighbouring King of Nepal had a Mini, on the home turf, the Bhopal Royal family had two 1962/63 Minis one a Morris and the other an Austin.
The Mini was even raced in the Sholavaram race in Chennai," says Manvendra Singh Barwani, of the royal family of Barwani region in Madhya Pradesh, and a classic vintage car expert who has penned The Automobiles of the Maharajas along with Mumbai-based historian and researcher Sharada Dwivedi.
His own recollection of the mini is when his father, His Highness Rana Devi Singh, bought the car for his sister Princess Nirmala Kumari when she turned 18.
"My sister was a fast driver and she loved driving this small car which came without air conditioning then," says Manvendra, with a laugh.
That's one reason why the car wasn't so popular here.
Import restrictions
The other reason was that when imported from abroad, one also had to get extras tyres, as there were import restrictions and heavy taxes to pay for spare parts that weren't available in India then.
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Though his father had imported extra wheels when he imported the car, Manvendra recalls one evening when he had taken the car out for a drive and one of the tyres got punctured.
"I remember, I was driving it and one of the back wheels had a puncture. We couldn't change the wheel because the spare wheel was not in the car. We brought the car home on three wheels! I made one of my men sit on the left side of the car, and I drove it home," says Manvendra with a laugh adding, "That's utterly impossible to imagine in the present circumstances."
Space for a bottle of gin
He tells us that the first model of the mini came with sliding windows, and research tells us that the sliding windows actually allowed storage pockets in the hollow doors, which apparently Issigonis designed in a size that would fit a bottle of gin! Also, the starter ignition, believe it or not, was on the floor!
"So the person driving a Mini had to bend down first to start the car," says the car expert.
Another deterrent was the not-so-great rubber boot suspension. "This meant that the car was not a soft car, and one got the feeling of go-karting while riding it," Manvendra says.
Another interesting feature of the car was that the battery, which is located in bonnet of every car on the front, was actually in the Mini's boot! "But trust me, for a small car, it did have quite a spacious boot as well," Manvendra says with a laugh.
That didn't stop the Mini loyalists from opting for the small car, which had its pluses economically feasible for the middle class, and stylishly designed models for the elite.u00a0 Besides, it was easy to drive and park (it had a very good turning circle).
Also, the Mini did what many bigger and more expensive cars could not do in terms of handling and comfort, and it came at a time when the automotive world was tired of big cars and in need of something fresh.
So, let's hear it for the Mini.
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