Raymond Baxter 1922-2006. Would have been 100 years of age this year deffo. A well respected commentator when it came to cars, trains & aeroplanes. My late dad used to like his commentaries from Farnborough Air Shows especially.
@@hdaviator9181 no they wasn't, thats a myth......ford wanted to know how Austin could make a mini so cheap and deconstructed one and then came to the conclusion they were making a loss on every car ever since then people have said "oh they never made a profit on the mini" which is just complete bollocks
@@thedeadstig123 Funnily enough BL admitted in 1977 that Mini had been built at a loss until about 1968-1969 and only then did it really manage to break even at least.
@@cambs0181 Profits and commissions were low for us at the dealers, we made hardly anything on the 850, a little bit on the 1000, a bit more on the Clubman and the best of all was the GT. I loved the little cars though, my Clubman 1100 in Tahiti blue was my favourite demonstrator.
@@levelcrossing150 I remember there was a rear engined Fiat 850, there were a lot of models of it still around in the late 1970s presumably it was discontinued by that time. As far as I remember The Mini 850 was the smallest Mini in the 1970s ranges until the launch of the Mini City which upgraded the standard mini so the smallest engine in the revised Mini range was about 1000cc. A relative had a dark grilled Mini 850 in the early 1980s, very practical and compact. Her mother had a Mini 1000
@@deldirk7123 Yes I remember the Fiat 850 well, but there was an even smaller bodied Fiat 500 which had a great amount of character. Later on a re-bodied and more squarer Fiat 126 came along and replaced it. Your relatives were obviously proud of their Minis.
@@levelcrossing150 Ah yes the Fiat 126 and 500. They seemed to be more pupular and I see more of them preserved. The Fiat 850 seems rarer but perhaps I just don't notice them. I was given a lift in a Fiat 500 in the early 1980's, distinctive engine sound
So glad I have one, they are so much fun to drive, can’t wait to finish fixing it so it can work properly, cause it was broken when I bought it... getting new clutch today
I have one :) Yellow 1979 Mini Clubman.. turns heads everywhere I go ( also own 2 others 67 Mk1 Cooper S and 1994 Cooper SPI [very very highly modified] )
In my view it's the old minis that have the appeal for me. The Clubman 1100 was a great little car. It had comfortable cloth seats and mine was nearly as quick as the GT.
My sister purchased a brand new Mini in 1977 and even before she drove it off the forecourt she noticed surface rust. The dealer's reply was they all come like that !!
Lee Englandland That’s a load of balls. I worked for Lex Mead in Wembley in the summer of 1977, preparing dozens of cars for sale (taking of protective plastic, washing off wax from bodywork, etc., Minis, Jags, Triumph Dolomites and more and there was one hell of shoddy workmanship. The boot of one Dolomite was like orange peel. But not rust.
Funnily enough, the Mini my Dad bought in 1970 also had the same, but other than that it was a good little car. He wanted to ship it to Australia when we moved country.
I had a 1979 T reg Clubman saloon(1198cc engine) in yellow. Rusted under the sills and battery compartment floor in the boot.very easy to fix. Enjoyed it and passed my driving test in it in 1987.
+Lewis72 BMW have taken a similar approach, totally revising the rear light clusters, a mere 15 years after production started. I understand if you you pay more than £25k you even get air con!
"They are safe and very fun to drive, for instance, they are very lively!" (racing off, without seatbelts on..). I love the seventies so much. You could choose for danger, you could smoke wherever you wanted, at any age, drinking and driving was really a manly thing to do! One could even skip some schooldays if you had a nice story about it, haha, you were far more FREE than nowadays. We all do not dare to LIVE anymore...
@@dandare2586 that's not taking into consideration it has the best visibility of any vehicle 360 degrees compared to modern or larger vehicles, plus excellent handling. So you in theory should have a much better chance at avoiding an accident in the first place.
Wonderful reminder of "mininess". In those days side mirrors on passenger doors were optional luxury items! Steering wheels were huge as there was no power steering.
Yep I liked it too, it actually made me feel good when selling these cars. It was so sad when a huge company like that broke up. We thought it would always be around.
Wow! Reversing lights and a dipping read view mirror! No more putting the indicators on to see when reversing into the garage - half the time anyway due to the flashing. What would he have thought of today's efforts that reverse parallel park themselves? Be that as it may, if I could buy a new 1978 mini, I probably would. Fun.
Tinkering with the edges. The car was revolutionary when it appeared and remained competitive up until the mid seventies. Then it was left behind. My mum’s 1974 clubman estate had a rear bench seat, made with fibre board. It snapped after six months. Rust holes appeared in the doors after three years. We never had to replace the rear sub-frame because the car was scrapped before it was four years old. This 1978 car may have ‘improved’ but compared to the Fiesta and the Polo........ Please!
How many of those mark one fiesta's survive today in the UK? Counting from 1976 - 1983 there are between 2 - 3 thousand surviving fiesta's And during the the same time period, 13.7 thousand surviving mini's 🤯 In total there are at least 75 thousand classic mini's surviving in the UK today. 66% of those are SORN 😥
I won't even bother with the polo or the Renault 5 featured in the video, their numbers are even fewer 😅 actually, no other classic car can complete with the mini, not even the the mighty mighty mgb, the minor or the beetle 😎
Pity the Mini Clubman never featured the hatchback it was originally intended to have, being dropped just because the company did not believe hatchbacks on smaller cars was the future along with the fact that BL was stubbornly pushing the dull-looking slow-selling Austin Maxi (that amongst many things desperately needed a modern rebody like the Aqulia or Pininfarina 1800).
we had a brown Mini Clubman Estate and took it for an MOT and the guy shouts out "it's an Estate". My mother said "Cheeky bugger saying it's in a state"
The late Raymond Baxter having just stopped presenting Tomorrows World regularly on BBC. I remember him on washing machine ads in the early 1980s, and occasional appearancez on special editions of Tomorrows world from then until the programme went off the air
Happy music; a real man, not a cocky, jeans-wearing satirist who'd like to be a comedian: all missed, so very much. It makes me not care that the cars were much more unsafe than todays, as life itself was safer.
A new Mini Clubman or 1275 was used in a BBC Morecambe and Wise spoof Starsky and Hutch sketch. It looked quite well, and could have been valuable free advertising for BL
Just imagine how frugal it would be to run an 850cc car nowadays with modern fuel economy engine but the weight of the old mini. You'd never need to fill up! I should think some of the Japanese kay cars are like that but the elf 'n' safety mob won't allow them to be sold here.
There's only a handful of BL cars that did work and weren't just crap. The mini was one of them, the stag if it wasn't rushed when being built (the engine not being the problem as it was down to how quickly it was put together), dolomite sprint & the MGB (my father had one).
By 1978 sales of the mini were falling thanks British made ford fiesta. And I know what I’m talking about, I had a mini and a fiesta at different times. The Fiesta gearbox was smooth the seats were higher it felt like I was driving a larger car. The mini was noisy thanks it’s in sump gearbox which clanked as you changed gear, you could tell it was 19 years old at this time. To be fair to Alec Issigonis he designed a radical new hatchback mini 11 years previously to this film yet it was scrapped.
The mark 1 fiesta was made between 1976 - 1983 how many survived? 2 - 3 thousand! During the same period fewer Minis were made, but how many survive today? 13.7 thousand! The mini won 🥳 In total around 75 thousand survive in the UK today!
What a fabulous car and what a shame BL never kept up its development. When you see something like the 1972 Honda Civic and the first Golf you realize BL dropped the ball on what was a piece of genius that everyone else copied and improved upon. I wonder if BMW will ever make a mini MINI of the same dimensions?
They would have made something like the "Minki 1" (a concept rover mocked up in the 90s that got cancelled because it was too late or something). i.e. A Mini with a tilted back steering wheel, newer engine, 5 gears, a hatchback (with the fuel tank moved to beneath the rear seats to make space) and a modern (for the time) dashboard.
tbf they would use the mini as it was the only good looking high volume car in the range at the time. Ive still got the fiesta, it's a mk2 but same overall shape. making a big deal about 2ft turning circle they forgot to mention the boot is 2.5 times bigger. However the leg room in the mini is surprisingly bigger than an xj40!
I had a 1275Gt back in 1980 and had the car for 11yrs, It never let me down at all and went everywhere, She was in near mint condition when i sold her back in 1991, Jarva Green, PAB858T, wonder if she is still alive in the Uk,!
Imagine deciding which car to buy based on if it had a vanity mirror, handbrake grip etc 😅 I want the 1275GT because it has the the bigger engine and the rev count etc 😉 I can buy the other accessories from Poundland 😂
Omg this is fantastic. Reversing lights, nylon seats and dipping mirror. What else would you want? Leyyyylanddd , Leyyyyyylannnd, caaars! Let's all sing the company anthem. On a serious note, how much of the failure of the British car industry is because of the branding as Leyland cars? Austin Morris, jaguar, landrover, Wolsey eats now branded as Leyland cars. Ugh.
I had a 1976 P reg 1275 GT, its doors rusted out after 2 years, the steering rack broke, the fuel tank corroded, the front suspension collapsed and it always broke down! It was only 3 years old when I got rid! I was so upset after having had a 64 & 70 minis. I blame Red Robbo. I then went with Toyota for reliability in 1980; I never looked back.(oh just to add I tried a Volvo S40 on a 08 plate, only 20K miles. Even a bigger piece of Junk! - Don't get me started! Soon rushed back to Toyota. Phew!).
@@deanosaur808 It Was, really only 2 years old, registered in 76, I got it in 78. Alas it had already done 35K, and I learned, had not been looked after well. When I traded it in in 1980 for a New Starlet, it was fun to see it on a cold morning. Smoke everywhere! The engine was trashed, a sign of poor servicing in early life. I paid £850 for it in 78, got £960 on the Trade in! So a good ending! My new Starlet was £3,200 in January 80 "V" Reg
Competitors major advantage is the tailgate. No their advantage is selling cars that are not a twenty year old design that they can mass produce with a robotic production line.
Ford Transit? _groannn!_ Seems to me like you've never driven a Mini (I drove a MkIII Transit for 2 years - it was a stinking piece of shite that was molting parts like a mangy and flea bitten dog. Driven Minis - they _RAWK!_ )
So the 850 was too embarrassing to comment on? I had a Clubman and my mate had a mk1 Fiesta - I don't like Fords but i was obviously streets ahead of a Mini
Fewer than you would imagine, but it's disturbing that Marc Bolan died that way just one year before the video was made 😱 Maybe he could've survived if he wore a seatbelt 🤷♀️ the driver survived just fine
True - but I don't think tyres would have saved him...it was probably his girlfriend's _driving_ that led to the smash (even though she was cleared of any wrongdoing - I mean, how does one lose control of a _MINI_ on a straight stretch of well lit road?)
Wow, I've got twin coach lines made from sticky back vinyl. A real-world beating selling point in 1970s Britain. Nothing about the lack of a radio or heated rear screen. Nothing about the lack of synchro on the first gear of a four-speed gearbox. Dipping rear mirror. who wants on anyway. No wonder the Japanese cleaned up.
And someone had to clean the piles of rust that remained of those Japanese cars of the time 😂 Tens of thousands of minis still survive to this day in the UK. The popular Japanese cars of the day are almost exist. But I'm sure a few survive elsewhere, maybe 😅
Date of Liability 29 09 1994 Date of First Registration 03 04 1977 Year of Manufacture 1977 Cylinder Capacity (cc) 1098cc CO₂ Emissions Not Available Fuel Type PETROL Export Marker N Vehicle Status Unlicensed Vehicle Colour BLACK Vehicle Type Approval Not Available
What a ridiculous out-of-date ad, even for '78 this was! The mini by then was so old..fancy thinking to compare it to the R5 or the Fiesta!.. simply cars from another planet (as well as another market segment)! The speaker's RP accent makes it all the worse!!!
Paianni I know what you mean but , my Dad had a Vauxhall Viva mark III that was crap , he got the civic after that ,, the 1975 Civic was about the size of a Fiesta not that big , the Mini was not much cheaper and had no extra's as standard compared too the Honda or other Small cars it was poor value ,,,
