The super Mini Cooper

they are, to hardy swimmers, a giveaway that you’re a fairweather swimmer. Last year, a sign was put up at Sandycove, Dublin, saying, ‘No Dryrobe or Dryrobe types!!!’, with a suitably unflattering picture of three awkward figures in their dryrobes.

I would have been with the anti-dryrobe brigade – until I bought one two summers ago. It was a godsend in many ways.

First, it revolutionises the technique of changing into your swimming costume without

Happy 60th birthday to the Mini Cooper, which first came off the production line in September 1961.

The original Mini was designed in 1959 by Sir Alec Issigonis (1906-88). The brief delivered to Issigonis by Leonard Lord in March 1957, then head of the British Motor Corporation (BMC), was to create a miniature, four-seat, economical saloon car, capable of big-car performance. This was in response to increasing popularity of the ‘bubble car’, boosted by post-Suez petrol rationing. To Lord, they were not ‘proper’ cars; he detested them.

The car was designed, a prototype built by July 1958, with production beginning in 1959 for the August launch that year.

Meanwhile, John Cooper, a worldchampion racing-car constructor, had been attempting for a while to create a small, four-seat, fast road car. His attempts in modifying a Renault Dauphine failed owing to the car’s poor handling.

When the Mini was launched, it was exactly the car Cooper was looking for. With modifications to the engine and gearbox and the fitting of front disc brakes, Cooper transformed it into a ‘mini sports car’. Cooper and BMC finalised a financial agreement and plans to put the car into production. It received interior and exterior trimming embellishments, with Cooper’s name added to the badging. And so the ‘Mini Cooper’ was launched 60 years ago.

The car became a runaway success. A further developed and higherperforming Cooper ‘S’ would win lots of international race and rally awards throughout the 1960s. having to do the towel-clutching dance. NB: withdraw your arms from the dryrobe sleeves and place them within the tented robe area for maximum changing efficiency. The dryrobe is also a most comforting, warm refuge after you’ve had your dip in the not-socomforting British seas. You may not need a dryrobe in the Caribbean or the Med; in Pembrokeshire waters, where I swim most often, I now depend on mine.

What’s more, the dryrobe dries very quickly once you’re wearing it. So there’s no need to take it off for your journey home from the beach. Sensitive readers might want to look away here: all you need to do is whip off your costume and drive home commando-style, with only the dryrobe between the world and your body as nature intended. And there’s no need to carry home a sopping wet towel with you.

This summer, I’m planning on even driving to the beach with my dryrobe already on.

Yes, I will look ridiculous; but I will also be ridiculously comfortable.

On a beach near you this summer

Harry Mount

The super Mini Cooper turns 60

The Mini Cooper not only enjoyed worldwide motor sport success; it also became the car to be ‘seen in’. Celebrities, pop stars and royalty owned them – usually custom-built. Traditional coach-building companies, such as Radford, Hooper and Wood & Pickett, normally associated with building Rolls-Royce bodies, were commissioned to create bespoke luxury Minis for the good and the great.

From the early 1960s, Minis were seen on roads worldwide. They have become iconic – more than any previous car. Generation after generation enjoy these little cars. But it’s the Cooper that’s still most wanted, 60 years on.

Something that’s kept the original Mini Cooper alive is the film The Italian Job (1969), itself an icon. In the caper film, about a bank robbery in Turin, the British gang makes its escape through the city in three Mini Coopers, the boot of each filled with stolen bullion. The escapade takes the Minis through traffic, shopping malls and sewers. They cross rivers and jump rooftops, all at high speed. The carabinieri are in hot pursuit! The film has a star-studded cast – not least Noël Coward – but the real stars are the Mini Coopers.

In 2001, a brand-new car replaced the original Mini. The company, then BMW-owned, launched the new car as a brand in its own right: MINI. Traditionalists damned the new MINI. Much rivalry followed between owners of the original Mini Cooper and the new MINI Cooper.

It is a very good car, though. Although not revolutionary like the original, it has many of its good qualities: it is a compact four-seater and has extremely good handling capabilities. Built at Cowley, Oxford, it has been extensively raced.

Early MINIs are a sought-after collector’s item, just like the original. Although a truce now exists between owners of Mini Coopers and MINIs, the new car can never replace the original in the hearts of the public.

Garry Dickens

Mini sports car with maximum oomph – an early brochure