The logical place build the New MINI was Longbridge where the Classic Mini had been in continuous production for nearly forty years. The Rover 100 line was closed down and a massive £400 million investment was poured into the plant to prepare it for MINI, Land Rover and new Rover model production. A large part of that £400 million investment (perhaps up to £200 million) was eventually due to be returned to BMW/Rover by the British Government as their contribution towards regenerating the plant, the company and the area. However, the changeover from Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson to Stephen Byers resulted in considerable delays. At the same time, the high exchange rate of sterling and the lack of productivity at Longbridge were beginning to concern BMW’s board in Munich. At an all day board meeting on February 5th 1999 BMW lost two leading board members (Bernd Pischetsrieder and Wolfgang Reitzle) and Rover’s fate was sealed; the company would be sold.

Retaining the MINI and Land Rover brands was a no-brainer; too much money had already been sunk into the new generation icon and Ford had expressed a strong interest in buying Land Rover. However, with Rover (and Longbridge) now sold to the Phoenix Consortium they had to find a new home to begin to assemble the MINI. Of course, production could have been moved abroad. However, BMW always understood that the MINI is a British car and needed to be manufactured in the UK. There was also the fact that every other plant BMW owned was already working at peak capacity! The solution was obvious: Cowley. The old Pressed Steel/Morris Motors plant was happily churning out the new Rover 75. With that model being moved to Longbridge, Cowley was empty…

In a breathtaking feat of logistics, BMW moved all 229 robots and their computer control technology up to the newly-rechristened Plant Oxford. It cost £230 million (£80 million on the Paint Shop alone) but the plant was ready to manufacture MINI’s in only nine months. There is a school of thought that would say in nine months a British company would still be forming sub-committees to investigate the possibility of planning a project kick-off meeting…

Whilst all this had been going on, Frank Stephenson and his engineers had settled on not just the design of the car but also the mechanical specifications and the model range. There would be (at least to begin with) two versions of the car; a basic entry model and a slightly more expensive ‘sports’ version. From the moment the development of the New MINI had begun, BMW had wisely decided to retain the use of the ‘Cooper’ name for the premium model. John Cooper’s involvement did not end with the agreement on the use of his name; at various stages of the vehicles mechanical development the legendary tuner and enthusiast was consulted to ensure this new model inherited some true Cooper racing DNA. Although he passed away in 2000, John Cooper lived long enough to test-drive several versions of the New MINI Cooper and was on-hand to unveil an early test ‘mule’ at Gaydon in 1998.

As those who saw the car for the first time at Gaydon would have noticed, the New MINI was larger than the Classic. This was a necessity. In the intervening decades between the design of the old and new cars, the average person had grown four inches taller. That average person also expected a lot more sound-proofing and safety features in their car. Lastly, if the New MINI was to fulfil BMW’s expectations of being a car for everyone then it had to be able to sell in the US. Tiny, underpowered European ‘city-cars’ were not going to sell ‘across the Pond’. Indeed, BMW were not even sure the New MINI would succeed; at 3.6 metres long it would officially be the smallest ‘real’ car on sale in the US.

With the car due to debut in 2001, the year 2000 saw work begin on how best to market the New MINI. There had never been any question of sticking a BMW badge anywhere on the car. This was the reinvention and rebirth of an icon and as BMC recognised all those years ago, the MINI brand was strong enough to stand on its own. The man appointed to direct the marketing campaign, Torsten Muller-Oetvoes said: “We had to look carefully at the MINI; what it stood for, and what a MINI really was. We had decided that the New MINI could not be a visual fake, or lookalike, of the older car. We looked at the car in terms of driving fun and in terms of the go-kart feel – all those aspects that had made the old MINI so famous.” This sense of individual identity and fun extended into the planned showrooms and dealerships. Even if they shared floor-space with an existing BMW dealership, the MINI section would be separate and distinct. The cool, professional colours of the BMW brand would be replaced by vibrant reds and yellows; the understated BMW logo would contrast with the bold and brash winged MINI logo which would be splashed everywhere there was spare wall-space.

In October 2000, one week before the last Classic Mini rolled off the production line, the New MINI made it’s debut at the Paris Motor Show…

coming in Part Three: The New MINI Debuts

On 11 May, we need 280+ Minis to assemble from 5pm on Southsea Common for the record attempt. Entry costs £10 per car and all money raised will go to the Italian Job’s nominated charity KidsOut.

Pre-entry is available (You’ve only got a week!) by downloading the entry form from the Italian Job Website.

Please help us bring the record back to the UK, the official home of the Mini and MINI!

There’s a small entry on Ocean FM’s website along with a link to a short interview with the man, the legend, Chris Fawcett - the main event organiser.

Even if you can’t get your car to the record attempt, we’ll be at Gunwharf Quays all day so come down and say hi!

Jiffy At Brooklands:

Jiffy this morning:

You selfish wankers.  If we ever find out who did this they will feel the full force of the law and then some.

Read about it on the P&SMOC Forum.

It was in a locked garage!

The very first attempt at a second-generation Mini was designed by Issigonis himself. It was called the 9X and reached prototype phase in 1967. Stylistically, it was very similar to the later Clubman; it was reminiscent of his original design but with a square front-end. At this time Issigonis had been promoted to BMC’s Technical Director and had the ability to ‘green-light’ any project. The 9X was the first in what was planned to be a series of overhead-camshaft, four and six-cylinder engined cars. Little testing ultimately took place on the few prototype cars and when BMC became Leyland the project was cancelled. One car still survives, as does one innovation developed for this version of the Mini; the hatchback..

The next attempt to upgrade the Mini arrived in 1969; the Clubman. Former Ford stylist Roy Haynes decided not to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and opted instead to simply design a new squarer front end with the same indicator/sidelight design as the Maxi. Although the Clubman continued in production until 1980, and has many thousands of fans, it never ultimately killed production of the original ‘roundnose’ Mini.

Almost as soon as the Clubman became available to the public, BL started casting around for ideas on how to replace the Mini in the longer-term. Their idea would reach fruition as the often-forgotten AD074. Between 1972 and 1974, a great deal of time and money was spent on this new car. The thinking, and the design, was radical. The car was larger than the original Mini design and the Clubman. It had a more powerful engine, five gears and quite bold styling. Sound familiar? Only when presented with a bill for £130 million did BL balk at putting the vehicle into production. A similar idea would resurface in the mid 1990’s…

Once the AD074 was pronounced dead, efforts were directed towards a new Mini. This new car would eventually go on sale in 1980 and become (for a while, at least) as popular as fashionable in the 1980’s as the original Mini had been in the 1960’s; the Mini Metro. Taking some queues from the 9X, the Clubman and the AD074 the Metro was slightly larger than the Mini, had a hatchback and was radically restyled for a new era. The car was adopted by a new generation of royals and celebrities (from Princess Diana to Sarah Jane Smith in ‘Dr Who’) and just as the Morris Mini Minor had eventually come to be known as the Mini, the Mini Metro soon became known simply as the Metro and finally as the Rover 100. Although not as mechanically-sound, or lively, as some of its rivals (the Ford Fiesta and the Volkswagen Golf) the car survived the troubles that enveloped and ultimately destroyed BL/Rover and only ceased production when the line at Longbridge was needed to manufacture another model…

During the Metro’s life, the original ‘roundnose’ Mini was still being manufactured. Margins were tight, sales were decreasing and dealers were finding it harder and harder to shift but the icon had survived into a new century. The question was now; what next?

Development on what would come to be known as the New MINI began whilst Rover was under the ownership of BMW in the mid 1990’s. As such, the parent company set up competing teams to see who could come up with the best idea. They were determined that, with sales of the Mini and the Metro declining, that this would not simply be a new body on existing mechanics. No idea would be too radical and no suggestion off-limits.

Eventually both teams presented their ideas to the BMW board. Dave Saddington and his Rover team worked at Gaydon and their thoughts had turned to creating a modern reinterpretation of Issigonis’s original idea of a small, cheap city-car. The result was the Spiritual; a car only 120in long and very akin to the Smart cars of today. Like the Smart it was not particularly powerful or sporty. Meanwhile, in Munich, US-born designer Frank Stephenson had set up a team with a very different brief. His belief was that the Mini had survived not as a small and cheap city-car, but as a fashionable icon with sporting pretensions and an indefinable aura of ‘cool’.

Ultimately, BMW would agree with Stephenson’s vision…

coming in Part Two: The New MINI’s Difficult Birth

I want to do something different. There’s the possibility of a Clubman shell winging its way to me for very little cost. It will simply be a rolling shell and I know there’s lots that need to be done to it.

I have a few options:

1. Restore it to standard. But lots of people do this. I also have the Cooper which is basically staying standard. Even to the points that the original seats are going back in.

2. Shorty it. I have always wanted a shorty. In case you don’t know, this is a shorty:

3. Roadster it. That’s where you cut the roof off and turn it into a two seater:

3. Hot rod it. This is my favoured option at the moment. Having seen Wayne’s rodded Elf on the P&S website (and below) I am really tempted to do something similar. This will leave all four seats in place. And yes, I would paint it the same matt black and do the suicide doors.

So, which do you think I should do? Or should I do something entirely different? Let me know. It’s your chance to shape the MMM project. Whatever I end up doing, the only constant is that the roof will come off.

EDIT: I have put a new poll in the sidebar for if you want to vote without commenting. A comment with opinions and ideas would be much appreciated though!

Just in case you don’t know, the last photo is Neil Slark of Slark Race Engineering fame. An absolute god at A-Series tuning and a pretty bloody good racing driver too!

A total of 53 photos from the event are available on the Combe Flickr Set

Here are a few of my favourite photos from the day:

There are around another 50 photos spread between Flickr set 1 and Flickr set 2

Therefore, I am doing a few things:

1. Updating the software to WordPress 2.5
2. Installing a new theme (not iTheme as you can see at the moment). Probably StudioPress as can be seen at my personal blog.
3. Turning the site back into a blogging site. Yes, the focus will still be 99% Minis and 1% general motoring.

Oh, I had not a single entry for the Fantasy Formula 1 so that died before it even started. Maybe next year.

I have also decided not to convert the site to run with Joomla! at the moment. Mainly because I just cannot locate a decent import script to convert all the posts and comments I have here.

Please bear with me during the transition.

Collin

I phoned the current owner on Tuesday to find out if I could collect the car on Saturday.

The response?

“Sorry mate, it’s been scrapped.”

To say I was absolutely bloody fuming was an understatement. Yes, ok it’s taken me far too long to actually collect the car. A number of reasons for this, mostly surrounding a certain individual borrowing my garage to do work for people. Not having a transporter to get the car home didn’t help either.

But scrapping it? Come on, even this toss-pot knew how much the estate was worth.

I was speaking to a “friend” yesterday. He informed me that the car hasn’t actually been scrapped but has been promised as part payment to the guy that’s doing the work on the owner’s Mini van. Now, I know that the person that WAS doing the van is the same guy that was borrowing my garage.

If I find out that he has shit on me and the car has been promised to him instead then I am going to go mental.

If the owner has sold or given the car to someone else then no problem.

Suffice to say, I no longer have Project Clubby.

Gutted.