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Mini
Pop! Goes The Mini Cooper
Culture
By Mike Marino
Published September 2005
The British Are
Coming! The British Are Coming!
Those madcap ale drinking,
pub hopping bloody Brit Redcoats ain't just figments
of the imagination Mate! Nor are they strangers
in a strange land to the landscape of American
history. Over 200 years ago, a perplexed Paul
Revere rode deep into the bosom of the dark of
the midnight countryside to warn of imminent peril
and invasion by the forces of King George, by
George!
In due time, another George,
ours, who went by the name of Washington, took
careful aim for the royal jewells, gave them a
swift kick in the royal cahones, and sent them
packing north to Canada, eh, and back across the
big pond to Jolly Olde England. The Americans,
now victorious in revolution, would not fear nor
suffer another British Invasion ever again...well,
that is until the British Invasion of Mods, Rockers
and Pop Culture hit our shores like a behemoth
tidal wave with a rock n' roll backbeat in the
1960's!
The Fab Four...The Rolling
Stones...The Who! Who? British Music and moptop
haircuts sucker punched American youth culture
with powerful pop culture blitzkrieg and brought
it to it's sociological knees with a style of
dress and a new code of conduct that would propel
us into a whole new universe. A pop universe of
James Bond, shaken, not stirred. Carnaby Street
and Mary Quant, Dusty Springfield, Mods Aplenty
and Pussy Galore. We were high on hiked up mile
high mini-skirts and jazzed on jacked up go-go
bootsl. Our hearts pumping in overdive, and without
question, London proved, once and for all, that
indeed, England swings like a pendulum do!
John, Paul, George, and
Ringo, the Four Horsemen of the Beatles Apocalypse,
made an indelible impression on all of us, similar
to a tire iron being raked across the skull of
some hapless victim in a dark alley in Detroit.
However, it was an unlikely little motoring machine
that not only came to personify that era more
than anything else, but also flexed t's design
muscle and became a major bonafide pop icon. A
chrome-magnon pop star in it's own right with
a cult following to match that of the Grateful
Dead. That major, was a mini. A Morris Mini to
be exact.
The red-dread, dread-of-Red ideological ice age
that defined the meltdown nuclear Cold War era
had produced a politicaly unstable behemoth of
a glacier that was advancing and laying waste
to everything in it's path. That same instability
would eventually knock stability off it's pedestal
and produce a plethora of petrol panic at the
gas pump. The growing, out of control crisis in
the Suez Canal region in the later part of the
decade was to become the bravo-British-bravado
version of the shootout at the OK Corral in the
American Wild Child Wild West. This time those
madcap Earp's and Clanton's were replaced by mysterioso
shrouded-in-mystery Egyptians and pip-pip-cheerio
stiff upper lip and all that Brits. Plain and
simple, the sixshooter of oil consumerism had
run out of bullets, and gas rationing, once again,
was becoming a British way of life.
Clearly, a petrol saving,
more miles to the gallon messiah of a car was
needed to meet this crisis headon and to preach
the gasoline gospel, and it was the vehicular
virgin birth of a BMC classic that rose to the
challenge. In 1952, two separate motor companies,
Austin and Morris, merged in a marriage of metal
to form the British Motor Corporation. BMC raced
to meet the design needs of the growing gas crisis,
and by 1958 had test driven and sent to production
the design that would come to symbolize British
Culture in the 1960's.
The underwraps mini wonder
wagon was unleashed in 1959 in two separate versions.
The Austin factory in Longbridge gave birth to
the Austin Seven, "The Incredible Austin",
while the Morris plant in Cowley delivered the
Morris Mini, "Wizardry on Wheels". Both
destined to evolve into the singular, all powerful
and rally race fashionable Mini-Cooper by 1961.
Power and muscle were not
hallmarks of the original design under the motor
meister, Sir Alec Issigonis. Born in Turkey in
1906, Issigonis went to work at Morris Motors
in 1936 after studying engineering in his new
adopted homeland, England. His idea was simply
to design a car that was safe for the public and
affordable for the masses, following in the footsteps
of the vehicular visionary, King Henry the Ford,
and his immensly popular Model T, and also the
popular German Volkswagen. According to legend,
the original sketch of the Mini design was drawn
on a restaurant table cloth.
The Mini, at first was merely
a "housewifes car" fit only for toodling
to the grocery or scooting about town. In 1961
it got a high performance injection of John Cooper
vroom and zoom, and it was, not only off to the
races, but also well on it's way to becoming the
fashion accessory of the decade! The Mini sold
a respectible 20,000 units in 1959 B. C. (Before
Cooper), but by mid decade in 1965 it had topped
the 1,000,000 mark milestone for units sold!
John Cooper had a formidable
background in high performance motoring. Born
in 1923, John and Cooper, Sr. formed the Cooper
Car Company in the aftermath and shadow of WWII,
and by 1948 were building serious rear engine
racing monster mo-sheens. The 1950's were the
definitive age of the Chrome-magon. Racing was
taking the world by the short hairs, and Cooper
& Co. were making machines that were leading
the perfomance pack on the racing circuit and
in short time made it the must have car of the
speed loving motoring public. John had already
made a high octane impact on the autoworld, but
the heavy metal planets were all in perfect alignment,
and the best was yet to come when he put his expertise
to work on the marvelous Mini. It was from this
fornication of form and design that the pre-eminent
rally sportser of the times would emerge...The
Psychedelic Petroleum Prince of the Proletariat...The
Legendary Mini Cooper!
The decade of the 1960's saw the super duper Cooper
take on and kick asphalt in a variety of key races
that proved her metal once and for all. The Mini
Cooper won consecutive Monte Carlo Rally's, the
Tulip Rally's in '62 and '64, the Alpine Rally
in '63 and 25 other prestigious races out and
about the European continent. The original Cooper's
came with a 4 speed tranny, go from 0-60 in 12.9
seconds, 0-100 in 20 seconds and best of all,
got an amazing 30 MPG! Racing Coopers however,
along with the pedigree led a hard life on the
circuit and many had to be reshelled continually.
The Cooper also had a low
center of gravity for cornering, and the Cooper
S of 1963 - 1967 had wider wheels than a stock
Cooper. The Rally Rear Package came with straight
through exhaust, mini lite wheels, roll bar, twin
fuel tanks and a lightweight stick on lisence
plate. Other inclusions where woodrim moto-lita
steering wheel, Halda trip meter, tachometer,
stop watches, map light and a fire extinguisher!
Mods needed rods and that
damn little Cooper fit the bill and soon anyone
who was anyone was sporting a Mini Cooper, from
The Beatles to Peter Sellers. Michael Caine even
drove one into the realm of fame and infamy in
the film "The Italian Job" in 1969.
The Mini Cooper was king, and as anyone knows,
it's good to be the King!
As the Psychedelic Sixties
began to fade away in a bag of seeds and stems,
there were efforts afoot (Gadzooks!) to kill the
little Mini beastie, but it kept selling in spite
of those efforts. Cries of "It's Alive"
could still be heard loud and clear at the car
dealerships and showrooms, as the resiliant little
creature refused to go down without a fight. Until
the '80s.
As the decade of "Me"
dawned on the horizon the Mini began to decline
into it's own sunset on the automotive horizon,
but a new company that was now producing the Mini
was trying to keep itself afloat on the horsepower
ocean and not sink like the ill-fated Titantic.
That company, Rover, came out with themed editons
to tap into the reigning motherlode of nostalgia
and by 1990 Japan was eating them up like Godzilla
beast-feasting on nuclear power plants!
Sir Alec passed on to piston
paradise in 1988 and John Cooper crossed the quarter
mile into horsepower heaven in the year 2000 at
the age of 77. In 1994, Rover was acquired by
BMW and today they produce and export three different
models to the motoring masses. It might be a Mini
but you can't judge a book by it's cover...the
Mini Cooper Slogan sums it up best...
"You Don't Need A Big
One To Be Happy!"
Mike Marino
is a freelance writer of Pop Culture and Travel
and also a published author of "The Roadhead
Chronicles Book"
The Roadhead Chronicles
Book
http://community.webtv.net/roadheadthree/book
Contact:
dharmabumroadie@yahoo.com
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