British Motor Corporation Mini Mark I

The Mark I looks the way it does because of the way it was made. Body seams are welded with the flanges facing outward, which is why the roof, the gutters and the wing joints all carry visible ridges. It was cheaper to jig and easier to build, and nobody has since dared take it away. The door hinges hang outside the shell for the same reason, and the windows slide rather than wind, which frees the door skin for the deep open bins Issigonis wanted. He said afterwards that he had sized them for the ingredients of his dry martini, one bottle of vermouth and two of Gordon's, which is the kind of story you cannot prove and do not really want to. Austin cars wear the wavy grille the trade calls the moustache, with whiskers at each end. Instruments sit in a single central binnacle, the tail lamps are small ovals, and the number plate is hinged so it stays legible with the boot lid dropped flat for luggage. Underneath, two subframes carry everything, which kept the middle of a ten-foot car clear for people.

Three Monte Carlo Rally wins, and a fourth that got away. Paddy Hopkirk and Henry Liddon took the first on 21 January 1964 in a 1071 Cooper S registered 33 EJB. Timo Makinen and Paul Easter won in 1965 in weather that left 35 finishers from 237 starters, and did it as the only crew to reach Monaco without a penalty. Then 1966, which people still argue about. The works Minis came home first, second and third, were held for an eight-hour inspection, and were excluded because their auxiliary lamps carried single-filament iodine-vapour bulbs where the production car used dual-filament dipping bulbs. Roger Clark's Ford and Rosemary Smith's Hillman Imp went out with them. The win passed to Pauli Toivonen in a works Citroen, who refused to celebrate it. Rauno Aaltonen answered in 1967 and won by 12 seconds. On circuits the record is just as real: John Whitmore took the 1961 British Saloon Car Championship, John Love the 1962, Warwick Banks the 1964 European Touring Car Championship, and Aaltonen the 1965 European Rally Championship with the RAC Rally inside it.

In 1999 a jury of motoring journalists voted the Mini the second car of the century, 617 points against the Model T's 742 and ahead of the DS, the Beetle and the 911. That is the standing, and Britain in the 1960s is the reason for it. The Mini was the rare car with no class attached: it was what a Beatle drove and what a nurse drove, and both were making the same point by driving one. All four Beatles had one, several rebuilt by Radford at prices approaching a Rolls-Royce, and George Harrison's appeared in Magical Mystery Tour. Peter Sellers put one on screen in A Shot in the Dark in 1964. Then The Italian Job in 1969 fixed the image for good: three Mark I Cooper S cars in red, white and blue, wearing G-prefix registrations dressed up to match the release year, by which point only Mark IIs were still being built. The word escaped the car entirely. By the middle of the decade anything small and modern was mini, the skirt included.

A Mini asks for attention rather than tolerance, and owners give it happily. Rust is the main event, and because the shell is the structure it is worth doing properly. Sills, floors, A-panels and subframe mountings are what decide whether a car is a car or a project. The earliest saloons had wet footwells until BMC changed the toeboard overlap and the sill design, so a 1959 or 1960 example that stays dry has usually had that put right already. Mechanically, the layout has consequences. Engine and gearbox share their oil, which makes every oil change a gearbox service too, and a tired synchro on second is normal rather than alarming given there is none at all on first. Hydrolastic cars sag when a displacer leaks and need somebody with the pump. Drums on the 848 want a firm leg and regular adjustment. None of it is difficult, and nearly all of it can be done on a driveway with hand tools, which is exactly how so many Minis have survived at all.