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Mini More Facts (Mini Happy Returns – 60+ years on)

Author/Source: Dave Moss

10th August 2020

A dozen things you (probably) didn’t know about the Mini – looking back at more than 60 years of one of Britain’s best loved diminutive classics…

…by Dave Moss.

  1. It took three years to produce half a million Minis – the 500,000th rolled off the production line on 12th December 1962.

 

  1. The Mini was the first car to win the European Rally Championship.

 

  1. The Mini has been made in different forms in Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Belgium, South Africa, Chile and Venezuela.

 

  1. The record for a Mini “cram” was 26 people, performed on Noel Edmonds ‘Late late breakfast show’ in 1986.

 

  1. The Mini was voted the “Greatest car of all time” by Autocar and Motor magazine in March 1991.

 

  1. Its reputed that Joanne Westlake was the first person to be born in a Mini.

 

  1. Ringo Starr had his luxury Radford-built Mini converted into a hatchback – so he could get his drum kit inside.

 

  1. Before it finally switched to fuel injection in the 1990’s, Mini engines used more SU carburettors than any other car in the entire 90 year history of the SU company.

 

  1. When the last car was built in 2000, the Mini had been in production for well over a third of the entire time the motor industry had been in existence…

 

  1. At its sales peak, Mini production lines were fitting 2.4 million wheel nuts a year.

 

  1. At one stage the Austin version of the Mini was going to be badged the Austin Newmarket.

 

  1. The original Longbridge Mini assembly line was 220 yards long, and had 57 workstations. Each job took 2 mins 24 seconds, so building an early Mini took a little over 2 hours, 16 minutes.
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Categories: Classic Profiles, Classics Information, Dave Moss Tags: Mini history

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