Alec Issigonis design sketch
Issigonis was a talented artist who could sketch his ideas easily in great detail, though he relied on others to turn them into engineering blueprints. This early sketch is recognisably Mini, although it is far from the finished article that we know and love. The rear corners are very different for one thing, and the front end styling does not quite give us a cheeky chappy face, but you would never mistake it for anything other than a Mini. One interesting detail on this sketch is the positioning of the fuel tank in the engine bay just ahead of the front bulkhead, with a note to say that this would be stressed. Knowing how little room there was in a Mini engine bay even with the petrol tank in its production position in the boot, I would have thought that the main thing to be stressed by its underbonnet location would be the mechanics who had to work in there. Filling it behind a hot engine would be a worry, too.
Pre-production model
XC 9003 was a styling proposal for the new Mini that went through many tweaks and redesigns before reaching perfection. This was it in July 1957. The size and the overall styling is basically there,
