alec issigonis and the design of the mini cooper

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Alec Alexander Constantine Issigonis

Designer of the Mini.

Biography

Alec Arnold Constantine Issigonis was born is Smyrna, a Greek community in the Ottoman Empire. His grandfather Demosthesis migrated to Smyrna in the 1830’s and worked on the British railway that was getting built to link Smyrna to Aydin. Through Alec’s grandfathers engineering work when building the railway he gained British nationality. Alec’s father Constantine was born in Smyrna in 1872 with British nationality. Alec’s mother was called Hulda and can be traced back to Wurttemberg which is now part of Germany. The love of English things was passed down the family and because the family was now British they had to be evacuated from Smyrna because of the Greco-Turkish War. The family was evacuated to Malta in the September of 1922. After Alec’s father died in 1922, Alec and his mother moved to Britain in 1923.

Alec started of at Battersea Polytechnic in London, but failed his Maths exams three times in a row! Alec then decided to go to the University of London External Programme to finish his education.

The big step in his life was going into the motor industry because of course he would become famous after he designed the Mini for BMC.

Anyway he started off his career in the motor industry at Humber. He went onto doing some motor racing in the 1930’s and the years before the war in the 1940’s. He didn’t stay for too long at Humber as in 1936 he moved on to go to the Morris Motor Company. He worked on many different projects during the war but near the end of the war he was given the design brief for the post war car named, at first, the Mosquito. The name later changed from the Mosquito to the Morris Minor which was produced in the years between 1948 and 1971. In 1952 he moved just before Austin Motor Company and Morris joined up to form BMC or British Motor Company. He moved to Alvis Cars. He didn’t go on to much at Alvis designing some things but they are not really notable. By 1955 he was back at the BMC and straight into work. Alec’s boss, Leonard Lord wanted him to design a small economical car as soon as possible following the outbreak of the Suez Crisis in 1956 when fuel rationing was

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brought in.

The car he designed was eventually to be known as the Mini.

Alec played a key part in the development and success of the famous Original Mini Cooper which was launched in 1959. The Mini still looks as great as it did when it was first drawn on a restaurant table cloth by Alec Alexander Constantine Issigonis nearly fifty years ago.

Functionality.

The Mini is probably one of the most loved and popular car ever built because of its functionality and size, nobody really hates a Mini. In terms of functionality the Mini was a ...

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