Five adults, one baby, two dogs and luggage were loaded into the small car at the British Motor Corporation's Longbridge site in Birmingham. Bill Ellman, Daily Mirror
The Mini was born out of the Suez energy crisis that happened in the mid-1950s.
In October 1956, the British and French governments made a secret agreement with Israel to retake the Suez Canal, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized that summer. Israeli armed forces advanced into the Sinai Peninsula to provide a pretense for an Anglo-French task force, dubbed Operation Musketeer, to invade Egypt, ostensibly to ensure the security of the Canal Zone. However, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower refused to support the invasion and exerted strong economic pressure on Great Britain to withdraw. The Musketeer task force sailed for home less than 10 days later, but the incident prompted Saudi Arabia to impose an embargo on oil shipments to France and the U.K.
The Suez Crisis and its aftermath nearly collapsed the British pound, brought a brief return to fuel rationing in late 1956, and devastated new car sales in the U.K. Overnight, panicked British buyers turned to tiny, German-made “bubblecars” like the Isetta, Messerschmidt, and BMW 600, which were smaller and more frugal than any contemporary British-made car.
British Motor Corporation saw an opportunity and decided to build a revolutionary small car that would offer proper accommodation for four yet drink as little fuel as micro-cars. To accomplish the job, it hired famed engineer Alexander Issigonis, who had already designed Morris Minor in 1948.
Issigonis had a clever idea: by mounting the engine transversely up front and integrating the transmission with the engine sump, then driving the front wheels directly, the car can minimize the space for mechanicals and offset more space in the cabin and boot.
The Mini also adopted many space saving designs, such as tiny wheels with diameter of only 10 inches – so small that it necessitated Dunlop to develop special tires for it – and compact suspensions that used rubber cones instead of springs and dampers! The small wheels were pushed towards the corners to maximize interior space. All these tricks have become standards for modern city cars.
The launch of the Austin Seven caught the attention of the competition, in particular the Ford Motor Company who also produced and sold cars in the UK. A story arising at the time of the launch involved a discussion between the President of Ford Britain and the Chair of Austin Morris in which the Ford President declared his disbelief that Austin Morris could be earning a profit from every Austin Seven it sold.
From Ford’s perspective, the car was simply priced too low to be financially viable. The Chair of Austin Morris protested strongly, arguing that its unique body structure and quick assembly process enabled Austin Morris to produce a profit. When asked what that profit margin was, he was unable to answer.
Fearing that Austin Morris had found a new way of producing low cost cars, the Ford President demanded that Ford engineers buy an Austin Seven car and calculate how much profit was being made per car. The Ford engineering team dismantled an Austin Seven, calculated the price of every individual component and reassembled it to calculate the cost of construction. The result? Ford calculated that the cost of producing each Austin Seven was far greater than the selling price. In other words, Austin Morris was making a loss on every Austin Seven it produced.
Why did Austin Morris allow this? The answer lies in the lack of internal marketing within Austin Morris. Apparently, the finance department had not worked out the financial cost of producing the car, believing the sales department’s assumption that it would produce a profit.
and that my friends, is the kind of humor and innovative marketing stuff I get a kick out of.
Good Morning to you!
Depending on what sources one uses (and there are many, as I found out recently when writing an article about a Mini van), it was only the very cheapest version of the Mini that didn't make money. Or so the Chair of Austin/Morris claimed.
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