THE MARKETPLACE
THE CARS
THE BEGINNING
The Mini was one of the most prominent success stories of the 1960s, but despite BMC’s baby selling in its millions, profit was much harder to quantify. Whether the Mini made any money has long been a subject of debate, but like any business, there was always a desire for more – and the Mini Clubman would be one of the avenues explored.
To help in its quest to make its model ranges more profitable, Joe Edwards of BMC – by then known as British Motor Holdings following its merger with Jaguar – managed to poach Ford’s Product Planner and Stylist Roy Haynes, who had recently penned the hugely successful Mk2 Cortina. Haynes’ arrival was announced in October 1967, and he would be joined by fellow Ford stylists Paul Hughes and Harris Mann at the new BMH/Pressed Steel studios located in Cowley.
The new design team had been recruited to rationalise BMH’s bloated array of models into a simpler range, a task that included restyling some of the existing cars to give them a better chance of success. For the Mini, Haynes’ brief was to produce a redesigned model to replace the range-topping Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet models, which could then be sold at a premium price but with lower production costs.
FRONT… AND REAR?
That car would eventually become the Mini Clubman, and though details are thin on the ground, photographs captured at the time show that the project was intended to be more ambitious than a Ford-inspired restyled nose and interior. An image shown in the book by Rob Golding shows a couple of potential solutions, one of which was an illustration that retained the Elf/ Hornet’s longer rear end and mixed it with the Clubman front end. Another shows a prototype car with the Clubman f ront end taking shape but looking rather more like a Viva HB than a Mini, and a bulbous clay extension to the rear end, presumably to create more luggage
