Spot the fake

In the mid 70's the Daily Express ran a competition to find the oldest Mini on the road. Mum's September 1959 Morris Mini came second to the one that won the competition (First month of production) and ended up in a museum...

Mum's one still had the original engine. The museum one had a replacement.

The 6 continuation cars are not allowed to compete in a lot of classic races and are banned from Goodwood as they are brand new cars and cannot be likened to the original ones. They have been made using better quality materials, to a higher standard and the engines are far more powerful than the origanal ones.

Also there were 13 original cars, the 13th one was made up using the spare bodyshell and the spares sold off by Jaguar in the early 1980's.

Most of the cars stuffed in racing are repaired correctly using traditional panel beating skills and straightening out the crumpled panels. One of the lightweight e types was completely written off with only one straight panel. It has been totally restored using all the original panels and cost about £1 million pounds to restore but is now worth about £5 million!

All fair points, but that is why the 'Mini' name is now a marque, not a design. Like the Fiat 500...

I learnt to drive in a mini

How things change - these days there's nothing remarkable about a 18 or 20 year old car still on the road.

Neil

Absolutely right on both counts. Both cars are marketing-driven projects intended to capitalise on the cultural values associated with iconic originals.

They're therefore fakes, and bad ones.

They are definitely not fakes!

I thought fakes were only fakes when they were copies of the original being passed off as genuine.

Ian P

The cars that are built to stir memories of iconic originals certainly work. Of all the cars on the road you do not need to read the badge on the MINI the Fiat 500 or new beetle to know what you are looking at. Although the originals of these 3 cars are remembered fondly by those who drove them they are surpassed in every department by the new versions. The size has grown significantly but much of that has to do with our expectations of surviving a crash. The bodyshell of a modern car is very heavy so requires more power to give expected performance. If you put an original 850 mini engine in a modern MINI it would struggle to get it off your drive. There must be as much difference between an old and new MINI as there is between a pole lathe and a Haas machining centre. They are both of their time so how can they be compared?

Mike

Original Mini around 600kg, new mini around 1500kg. We used to race mini's, I wonder what it weighed with just a bare shell, lightened engine and a cage and seat? Not much im guessing. When we retired the car we burried it (money wasnt a problem back then!) in the grounds of the house, I bet whats left of it is still there!

660kg and 680kg are now the minimums for the two main original Mini classes in the UK (with a maximum of 25kg of ballast)

**LINK**

1000kg and 1125kg for the modern classes, the former based on the R50 2001-2005 model and the latter on the most recent version the F56 from 2014 onwards.

**LINK**

Not so fond memories of having to drive regularly distances of 300 miles or more in a Minivan during the 70’s, I now suffer from chronic back problems, that and long journeys in land rovers certainly contributed to my current back problems. Most comfortable car I owned then was a 1200 beetle, seats were really comfortable and heating system in winter was brilliant, definitely modern cars are a world apart from those times.

Dave W

Although modern cars are very heavy compared to the old ones weight saving is very much on the mind of the designers. High strength steel and laser welded blanks of different thickness material save a few vital grams in the weight saving quest.

Mike