MINI PEOPLE

From 1973 to 1975 Austin Morris was run by Keith Hopkins. The final pic dates from February 1975 when the Mini usurped the Ford Cortina as Britain's best selling car. This must be one of the last pics of Alec Issigonis at Longbridge.

In December 1974 BLMC went bust and was nationalised by the government. Crippled by strikes and with a rock bottom reputation for quality, the once great company slipped further into the mire. In November 1977 the government appointed South African born Sir Michael Edwardes to the chairmanship of British Leyland and he soon got on with the task of stamping out the stoppages.

In August 1979 Sir Michael Edwardes sacked the senior Longbridge shop steward Derek Robinson whom he believed was responsible for strikes and lost production. Robinson, nicknamed "Red Robbo" worked on the Mini production line where the colour images are from. Mini production at Longbridge was so low that cars had to be imported from BL's Seneffe factory in Belgium to satisfy UK demand.

In 1965 BMC purchased Pressed Steel Fisher, a body pressing manufacturer that supplied most of the British motor industry. The PSF factory was adjacent to the BMC plant at Cowley in Oxford. Alarmed at the prospect of BMC owning its body supplier, Jaguar Cars Ltd agreed to merge with BMC in July 1966 to form British Motor Holdings (BMH). Jaguar also needed financial backing for its forthcoming XJ6 saloon which was unveiled in 1968 to great acclaim. Unfortunately for Jaguar, BMC were financially weaker than they thought, losing an estimated £30 per Mini. By the end of 1965 BMC had produced 1,212,618 Mini's which works out at a staggering loss of £36,378,540............
Pictured below are some of the BMH leading lights with Mini's and Jaguar's.



L to R

Lester Suffield-BMC director
Ron Lucas - BMC director
Joe Edwards - BMC managing director
Sir George Harriman - BMC chairman
Sir William Lyons - founder, chief stylist and chairman of Jaguar
Sir Alec Issigonis - BMC technical director
J.L. Lutyens - PSF chairman


The postscript to all this is that in the early 1990's the old Morris Motors/BMC plant at Cowley was sold of for redevelopment and demolished. Car production was moved into the former PSF plant which BMW inherited when they bought the Rover group from BAE in 1994. Since 2001 MINI production has taken place in the former PSF factory. One wonders if BMW wish they had the larger ex-Morris motors factory aviallable to them. The engines for the MINI have to be produced at a seperate site at Hams Hall, Birmingham.

This is the only pic I have ever seen of Chris Kingham, who joined Issigonis at BMC from Alvis to work on the ADO15 Mini project. Later he was senior engineer on the ADO17 1800 car.