Their focus was on the home market and turning Austin Morris into a Ford clone which, given Britain’s failure to gain access to the lucrative EEC car market, seemed a logical step at the time. These cost-control experts had little time for Alec Issigonis’s design philosophy and his cars, which they deemed to be unprofitable. BMC was an international player, Ford of Britain was not, and there lay the vital difference between the two manufacturers. The formation of the British Leyland Motor Corporation in May 1968 led to an influx of ex-Ford finance personnel into Austin Morris as BMC was re-branded. The data on BMC’s overseas success with the Mini and its bigger brother, the ADO16, was not so readily available. This revealed the insular mindset permeating the City of London and the financial institutions. UK sales peaked in 1963, which allowed analysts pouring scorn on BMC’s business methods, such as Anthony Bambridge of The Observer newspaper, to claim that the Mini was in terminal decline, and all this was a symptom that BMC had got it all wrong and was heading for the rocks.Ĭertainly UK sales had declined a whopping 38.63 per cent between 19, but overseas sales had increased by 51.21 per cent, offsetting the Mini’s perceived decline. The whole saga that enabled Leyland to gain the upper hand in the merger negotiations with British Motor Holdings was based on an analysis of BMC’s domestic performance in comparison with Ford UK. What these figures reveal is what a remarkable car the original Mini was, with overseas sales topping 100,000 by 1962. In the early years of Mini production these overseas sales would have been exports of actual cars but, as overseas production began, the picture becomes more confusing. The overseas sales figures are an approximate estimate, derived by subtracting UK sales from total production and take no account of cars sitting in showrooms awaiting buyers as each new year dawned.
In this article, I will try and clarify the situation, but whether I reach a satisfactory conclusion is another matter. First of all the BMIHT production figures are combined with UK sales up to 1993 to give us an idea of the numbers we are analysing. While many an overseas Mini had an A-Series engine imported from the UK, some had a locally-made unit. So is the figure of 5.3 million really accurate? In a similar exercise in the July/September 2009 issue of the Australian magazine The Mini Experince, now The BMC Experience, journalist Craig Watson disputed this and came up with a figure of at least 6,302,000 Minis produced.Īpparently, he was informed by British Motor Heritage at Gaydon that the research was to big a job for them and that they did not have all the records from Longbridge. Craig Watson used as his base figure the BMIHT total of 5,378,776 but, as this already included some foreign manufactured vehicles, I will start with the total of UK models. What constituted a CKD kit and what constituted a car completely made from locally-sourced components?
Using the BMIHT figure, this leaves some 355,095 cars to account for. If we use those supplied by MG Rover, we have a difference of 364,181. However, what is also confusing is how many were manufactured by overseas plants and whether these were counted as CKD kits built by BMC/British Leyland at its British factories. Mini Moke (including Australia and Portugal) 49,937 The next step is to collate all the individual production data on a model by model basis. The bizarre feature about these discrepancies is that they do not start to appear until BL/Rover had divested themselves of most of their overseas plants and production was by and large centred on Longbridge. The difference between the two sets of figures appears to start in 1977. However, even the official figures differ.Ĭhris Rees, in his book ‘ Complete Classic Mini 1959-2000’, gives a figure of 5,378,776, supplied by the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust. Jon Pressnell, in his book ‘ Mini – The Definitive History’, has a total of 5,387,862, as supplied by MG Rover. Most of these were produced by the Longbridge plant, which manufactured the Mini throughout the little car’s lifetime. In terms of sheer volume, the original Alec Issigonis-designed Mini is the most successful British car of all time, with an official figure of around 5.3 million being produced between 19. He finds more questions than answers – but it looks like more than six million of all types were made. Ian Nicholls unravels the production data to try and come up with a definitive number of Minis built.