The CCB Mini-Festo

Our team was asked which Mini appeals to them the most and why. We ended up with a shining collection of classics from the 1960s through to the 2000s

- Paul Wager

ERA MINI TURBO

Time for some controversy here: I’ve always reckoned the best classic Mini wasn’t, in fact, a Mini at all, but its supposed successor, the Metro. Although it didn’t appear until 1980, the Metro offered all the advantages of the Issigonis original – the unrivaled packaging, the driving fun, and the low running costs–but fewer of the compromises. The interior offered even more passenger space, the steering wheel was at a slightly less awkward angle and the crowning glory was the hatchback practicality. BL had tried and failed to update the Mini in a similar way as early as the ’60s when the hatchback 9Xprototypeshadbeenshown, so there's justification for claiming the Metro to be the ultimate incarnation of Issigonis’s original idea.

But as the rest of the team have made very clear to me, the Metro is a Metro and not a Mini, so the achievements of the ‘Thinking man’s Mini’ as I like to call it are largely irrelevant.

This means I need to choose a second candidate for my favorite Mini and with the modern John Cooper Works having been nabbed, I’m back in the classic Minicamp. I must admit to a certain fondness for the pram-like Mini convertible simply because it’s such an unlikely creation but ultimately it’s an equally outlandish Mini which gets my vote: the ERA Mini Turbo.

Something of a Holy Grail for Mini fans, the car was genuinely a creation of the English Racing Automobiles company, which by then had been renamed Engineering Research & Application, operating primarily as an engineering consultancy.