Mini - 1959 The Guardian

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 08:24
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - oldroverboy.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/26/morris-mini-minor-austin-seven-launched-1959

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 08:44
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - SLO76
Comical that it took purchase of the de luxe version to obtain a heater. How spoiled are owners of today’s small city cars? But few of them will know the go cart like joy of piloting an original Mini along a twisting B road or blasting full whack from space to space around town. A total hoot to drive but terribly bad at resisting rot.
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Tue 27 Aug 2019 08:55
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Surreydriver

My father had an early one with the painted front grille. Took our family of four to Cornwall many times with three tents and kit for two weeks camping. My sister and I were taught clutch control and steered round the empty field on the farm we stayed on. I remembered the marigold on the distributer many years later when I had a clubman.....

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 10:31
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - expat
Comical that it took purchase of the de luxe version to obtain a heater.

When I first went out with the missus she had a Morris 1500 (think 1100 but with OHC 1500 engine). It didn't have a heater and she froze the first winter. Yes it can get cold in Australia or at least it feels it to us. Second winter I decided to get bits from a breaker and fit a heater. Put my head down under the dash to see what was needed and lo and behold there was a heater there. The miserable <expletive deleted> at BMC had put in a heater as standard but only connected it up if you paid extra for the deluxe. I bought some hose and fittings and a couple of levers for it and lo and behold we had heat!

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 11:54
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Andrew-T

Both our daughters learnt to drive in Minis in the mid-80s - we had a succession of five in different colours (one rather unsavoury) and various states of corrosion. One daughter developed a knack of leaving the car with about a cupful of fuel in the tank for the next user.

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 12:29
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - bazza

  • Had 4 of these and wish I still had one tucked away somewhere, but as said rust is a huge problem. My first car was a 1969 Mini, which I tuned up with a skimmed Cooper head and bigger SU carb plus manifold etc, added a mighty 5 to 10 bhp! That being quite a lot and made it a nippy thing, flat out good for about 90 odd mph, sounds comical but that was quick in one of those! But of course trying to stop it from those speeds was terrifying with drum brakes that simply couldn't cope with that and they would smoke and fill the cockpit with acrid fumes! I swapped that for a 1275 GT which did 250 miles per pint of oil, quite normal back then (and so it seems today for some VAG owners). The GT was fitted with proper disc brakes but in reality wasn't much quicker than my tuned 1000. The one we all wanted was the 1275 Cooper S of course. There's a bendy road in N Wales that is now limited to 40 mph , I remember being a passenger in a 1293cc Cooper S pulling indicated 100mph on it, I don't know how we got away with it! They were great cars and different times!

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 12:06
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Avant

Shortly before our wedding in 1974 my wife-to-be needed a car, and our friendly local garage sourced us a 1965 Morris Mini-Traveller. It ran for several years without major problems. We were lucky to get the Morris version: in those days it had a grille with the slats much closer together than the Austin version, and we never had any problems with spray coming in and drowning the engine. We remember GGH 370C very fondly.

Funny to think of it - that Mini cost about £300. The year before, my new Maxi HL from the same garage - an 'Austin agent' - cost about £1,500. Forward 45 years, and you can still find a serviceable banger for a few hundred pounds, but the cost of a new car like my Q2 - which is designed to do much the same job as a Maxi - is 20 times as much.

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 15:52
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - nick62

I had a 1978 Clubman with the 1100 engine, what a hoot. It had wheel spacers and wide rims and needed new wheel bearings on a very regular basis. For a Mini with those wide tyres it was hopeless in the snow.

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Tue 27 Aug 2019 17:01
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Senexdriver
I narrowly missed out on experiencing one of the first minis. My Dad ordered one when they were first available, but during the waiting period, Ford introduced the 100E Popular - a budget version of the Prefect and Anglia. It was the same price as the mini, but obviously had more appeal to my Dad as he cancelled the order for the mini and bought the Popular instead.

I can remember when we went to collect it. I was 9 at the time and was ushered out of the sales office when they began to sort out the finance - obviously not something a small boy should be privy to (how times change!).

What prompted me to comment was that the mini didn’t have a heater, as neither did the Popular. It was an optional extra and at £18, something Dad just couldn’t run to.

I do sometimes think that Dad dodged a bullet in cancelling the mini. Brilliant little car, but the early ones suffered with water in the electrics and the rust problem is legendary. The only problem the Popular suffered was a blocked carburettor jet on a trip to London one day. And when he sold it after 6 years it had not rusted badly.
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Tue 27 Aug 2019 18:20
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - concrete

What memories. Second car was a Mini GDC ***E, can't remember the actual numbers now. My first car a Ford Pop with vacuum operated windscreen wipers that slowed down the faster you went and speeded up when you slowed down, how perverse was that? Anyway this Mini did have a heater and i kept it for about a year before getting a newer one, HDC ***F. Great fun, went on holidays to Cornwall and Scotland camping. No bother with either car. Great for showing bigger, faster cars the way when it came to the back roads. I remember that long gear lever with the two bends in it. Even used to change gear without the clutch if you timed it right. Moved on to a Spitfire next, well when a young man's fancy turns to other things.......

Cheers Concrete

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 00:45
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Avant

As a boy I used to know where the registration numbers came from - I can remember a lot of them now (OK - sad). Did you hail from Middlesbrough, Concrete?

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 11:40
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - ExA35Owner
What prompted me to comment was that the mini didn’t have a heater, as neither did the Popular. It was an optional extra and at £18, something Dad just couldn’t run to.

Ten years after this we bought an Austin pick-up (Morris Minor but badge engineered). The following were extras, if I remember correctly:

Heater

Door locks

Seat belts

Spare wheel (the worldhas come full circle there)

Passenger seat

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 12:51
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - John F

Shortly before our wedding in 1974 my wife-to-be needed a car........The year before, my new Maxi HL from the same garage - an 'Austin agent' - cost about £1,500. Forward 45 years, and you can still find a serviceable banger for a few hundred pounds, but the cost of a new car like my Q2 - which is designed to do much the same job as a Maxi - is 20 times as much.

Avant, I suspect that £1,500 equated roughly to your young professional's annual income which, during the dreadful state the country was in then, (3 day week, stagflation..), probably enabled a sense of personal well-being. I doubt if a young professional today on £30,000 would feel quite as valued!

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 08:41
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - FoxyJukebox

First car I bought and owned was a new mini van in 1971. It was fine but everything...yes everything, rattled. Great starter car for getting about tho'

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 12:37
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - sammy1

I too had early minis.. Did the first ones have the starter button on the floor, I can't remember, some car did? And then on minis there was that 2-3inch hose between the head and the block?. What a nightmare to change!

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 13:51
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Andrew-T

Did the first ones have the starter button on the floor, I can't remember, some car did?

Yes, some certainly did, including SWMBO-to-be's mushroom-coloured Mini-van - her first vehicle, £400 in about 1962. Sometimes long grass could get caught in the contacts, which made for some fun ....

Edited by Andrew-T on 28/08/2019 at 13:52

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 13:59
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - nick62

Dads early 60's min vans (he had a few) had a foot operated switch on the floor.

It wasn't the starter, but it could have been the dip-switch or the (manual) windscreen washer pump? can anyone enlighten me please? EDIT: It was the dip-switch! The hand-operated washer pump was mounted on its own to the right of the other switches.

I also remember the green indicator lamp in the end of the indicator stalk.

Edited by nick62 on 28/08/2019 at 14:31

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 19:02
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Avant

The starter button on the floor was a silly attempt by BMC to be retro: the early 30s Austin 7 (box) had this feature, although I think the later Ruby models had a pull starter on the dashboard (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Fortunately our 1965 model had the by-then-conventional key-operated ignition and starter.

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 19:42
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - badbusdriver

There is an excellent article celebrating the Mini's 60th anniversary in the june issue of The Automobile. This is split into 4 parts, history, engineering, impact (social), and finally the owner. this centres around both the feature car, a very early 1959 model, and its owner, the esteemed Ivan Dutton. Well worth seeking out if you are interested in the Mini, not sure if the article is available online (The Autocar is very much an old school type of publication!)?.

The feature car is a particular gem, being a very much used example, and while perhaps not quite 'oily rag', is a long, long way from being a concours trailer queen!.

Edited by badbusdriver on 28/08/2019 at 19:43

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Wed 28 Aug 2019 23:34
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Senexdriver
I’d have given anything for a mini van as my first car, but I just didn’t have the funds or the income to make that possible. A mate at school had one when we were in the 6th Form and 5 of us used to go out in it at lunchtimes. One sat in the passenger seat and the other three bounced around in the back. Oh, the folly of youth...
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Thu 29 Aug 2019 10:22
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Andrew-T

.... gear lever that went straight into the box -happy days.

Did it really - in a transverse engine? I don't remember that. I know all the transmission was in the sump, but even so .... Must have been like the Renault umbrella change.

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Thu 29 Aug 2019 22:37
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - nick62

.... gear lever that went straight into the box -happy days.

Did it really - in a transverse engine? I don't remember that. I know all the transmission was in the sump, but even so .... Must have been like the Renault umbrella change.

There was a small integral linkage arrangement on the back of the sump/gearbox/differential housing. The early Minis had a gear-stick that went directly into it. It was quite long! Later ones had a remote control/linkakage in the exhaust tunnel so the gear-stick position was more "normal".

Early type:tinyurl.com/yy3s4z69

Later type: tinyurl.com/yxtorb28

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Fri 30 Aug 2019 06:32
Mini - 1959 The Guardian - Bromptonaut

Did it really - in a transverse engine? I don't remember that.

Nick's post shows the versions. I remember the direct iteration.

My Mother had a 1966 Austin Mini SDL and later a 1972 850 base model. Both had the direct gear stick and I cut my driving teeth on the 72 one - PWY 170K. The stick had no centring to 3/4 plane like in modern transmissions. It was a bit cumbersome until you got the hang; changes across the gate were almost wholly up/down. Once it was in first the change to second was effected by by bopping stick down. Second to third was lift - towards driver - then bop down.

IIRC remote change was a feature that came with the mark 2 versions around 1968 but was initially for the 998cc 'Mini 1000' and the Clubman. Might have been present on mk1 Coopers and the Riley Elf/Wolsey Hornet, no knowledge of such exotic kit....

Edited by Bromptonaut on 30/08/2019 at 06:49

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