Al Mini

In vehicle dynamics, weight is an important consideration. Weight affects a car’s dynamics unlike any other, making its presence known from the purely subjective measure of “driving pleasure” to the cold numbers of fuel economy. With legislation requiring ever more safety equipment, and consumer tastes demanding ever more comfort, space and better fuel economy from their cars, it’s a mad dash to keep vehicle weight in check. Different materials are now being employed towards this end, and aluminum has been working wonders, with early mass-market adopters Jaguar and Audi preaching its weight saving benefits.

Of course, racers have been gracing intricate frames with shapely aluminum bodies, shedding weight without the fatal consequences of setting magnesium alight.

The Mini Family Workshop

The man-cave is a mystical place for men with hobbies. A quiet place all to himself, the man-cave is the masculine equivalent of J.K. Rowling’s gender-neural Room of Requirement. Depending on the chosen hobby or passion of its owner, the man-cave can either be a place of quiet, wood-panelled and leather-wrapped contemplation, a home-based mecca of sports or a place where the man is free to craft, with his hands, what his mechanical imagination designs.

What we have here, then, is one very fine example of the man-cave. Or in more equalised terms, a workshop of a very high calibre.

Ten Feet of Britain: The Mini at 55, Part 3

We last left the Mini’s 55th with a pair of luridly painted and decorated Minis, proving that there really is no sullying the Mini’s good looks. This time we take a look at what happens when you decide to prioritise function over most everything else; we’re starting off with some Minis that were built to go hunting.

The team name is pretty accurate.

Strung between two tents was this banner, announcing the presence of the Move Over race team.

Ten Feet of Britain: The Mini at 55, Part 2

When the Mini started selling in 1959, BMC soon discovered a problem with the car’s sales: there was hardly any profit to be made at the price they were selling it at. To be sure, this was no fault of the car, but of the staff in BMC’s finance office. Perhaps they should have taken a far closer look at the car’s engineering before deciding upon the car’s selling price. Soon though, BMC had no choice: the Mini had become such an icon that they couldn’t afford to not sell it.

Ten Feet of Britain: The Mini at 55

In December of 1956, Britain was in quite a fix: a not-insignificant political indiscretion dubbed Operation Musketeer involving the Suez Canal resulted in an embargo on oil shipments to both France and United Kingdom. This prompted the return of fuel rationing to the country and ruined British car sales; overnight, German microcars like the Isetta and Messerschmidt became the cars of choice, being more frugal than anything the British had on hand. BMC (British Motor Company) was particularly concerned, both because they stood to lose a large chunk of market share and because chairman Leonard Lord reportedly took personal offense to the German “bubblecars”.

Enter the BMC Mini.

Ingress: The Mini 80 Club Celebrating the Mini’s 55th

One does not simply have a car show. A lot of logistics is involved in putting together a car show, even one in a wide-open space. After the obvious bureaucratic hurdles of finding and reserving a space for your show, there is of course the matter of the cars that will be in it. Where do you put each of them? How do you make sure that they enter the show area in an orderly fashion? Well, for one thing it helps a little if the cars in the show are small.

Or, in this case, mini.