Part 2 of our interview with Jon Pressnell, author of ‘Mini - The Definitive History’ (published by Haynes). (You can view Part 1 here)

Were Minis relatively cheap to buy compared with other cars of that era?

JP: They were too cheap! That was the fundamental problem. Technology costs money. The Mini was an expensive car to make and it was sold at a rock bottom price; they were frightened that it was too unconventional to be a success, so they wanted to protect it by giving it an attractive price, and the other thing was that people who were running BMC, which made the car, were not very able in terms of judging and administering their finances - and that’s a kind way of putting it!

Was the Mini an immediate success or did it take a while for people to accept it?

JP: There’s a bit of a myth that the Mini wasn’t a success at first. It didn’t get up to its intended production rate immediately, because it had so many teething problems, but in its full year of production, they made more of it than the car it replaced, the Austin A35, and by and large, production is related to demand. The car sold well from the start, but it sold a lot better once it was seen as a chic vehicle to have and once it had got the cachet of the Mini-Cooper and the Mini-Cooper S and all its competition success. That was quite something at the time.

These days if a car wins the Monte Carlo Rally, I’m sure it will help that car’s sales, but the Monte Carlo Rally is much less in the media than it was then. Then, it was reported in the press much more extensively and when a Mini won the Monte Carlo Rally, it didn’t just have an impact on sales in England, it also gave sales in foreign countries a real leg-up. In France, when the Mini won the Monte Carlo, the chap who was selling Minis in Paris said, “I couldn’t believe it. I thought there’d been an accident when I passed my showroom, because there were people crowding all over the place, but they were all trying to get in to place orders!”

I know it didn’t come along until 1969, but what impact did the film ‘The Italian Job’, in which Minis took a starring role, make on the popularity of the car?

JP: I wonder if that’s a nostalgia thing since. It was a successful film - and it’s a lovely film - but did it actually boost Mini sales at the time? I’m sure it did to a degree, but I think a lot of ‘The Italian Job’ is a nostalgia thing of the Eighties and Nineties. But with all these things, it’s another way of giving a product visibility.

The final part of the interview with Jon Pressnell will be coming soon, so keep checking this site!

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