I’m resurrecting a CC category / subhead that hasn’t been featured here in quite a while, but it’s for a good cause. I came upon this freakishly long Mini on a Monday morning a few weeks ago and immediately thought of this tagline.
So let’s examine out not-so-little FrankenMini. I was very fortunate in finding this thing on a nice and sunny day and very eager to pose for the camera. Not all that many freaks are like that – they either shy away in a darkened corner, or you have to pay to get a good gander.
The base car seems to be a relatively recent (circa 1990?) “Rover” Mini. In Japan, they were badged as Rovers for some model years. Not sure which exact ones. But it still sounds wrong to be referring to this as a Rover Mini, so I prefer to call it Austin-Rover, which was the official name of the British Leyland rump operation that managed Longbridge when the group was privatized.
It’s not like this is the only four-door Mini ever made. Just browse the web for a spell and you can find a number of others, though no two seem to be exactly alike. Which is a bit odd to me: given how long these stayed in production, how popular they were and how cramped the rear seat is for taller folks (such as Jim Klein and his prodigious inseam), it seems a conversion, with or without a stretch, would be a great idea.
One thing against the stretch is how expensive it is, which kind of defeats the purpose (if not the very essence) of the Mini. That doesn’t mean BMC didn’t try, though: at least one four-door Mini was made circa 1962-63, using the Van / Pickup’s 84-inch wheelbase. This initial trial balloon did not lead to anything concrete and the car was probably destroyed at some point.
The notion of a four-door Mini was subsequently attempted again several times. Japanese Mini fundamentalists have committed several, judging by some of the photos I’ve seen online (top right). When BMW bought Rover, they decided to recreate a four-door classic Mini for the section of the BMW museum dedicated to Issigonis’ little wonder, but used a recent donor car, not a ‘60s original. They called upon Mengers, a German specialist shop who will sell you a like-new four-door Mini if you’re up for it (top left). Other conversions seem more home-made (middle left); some even tried to marry the saloon style with the convertible (middle right), just to make things extra weird. All of these were made by cutting the car, though, as opposed to using a LWB Mini base. And once you’ve cut the car in two, why not go all the way and stretch that to a limo?
The thing about all of these conversions is that they are all different. Some have a thinner C-pillar than the car I found, some have a thinner B-pillar (both being made from scratch on these Mini conversions). Some customizers deleted the gutters, and the rear doors never seem exactly the same from one car to the next, some even going as far as having rear-hinged doors, like an Austin FX4 Taxi…
So I’m guessing that this Maxi-Mini is a home-made creation, though it looks like it was made by someone who knew what they were doing. There are plenty of outfits who would be able to do this kind of work here, it’s just a question of money and spare Minis. And Japan has quite a lot of both of these. Let’s take a look inside, because all that extra length must make this thing quite roomy.
I suppose if you’re going to cut and shut a car and add custom-made doors and all that, forking an extra couple grand for a nice leather interior would be a no-brainer. Love the warm colour of that upholstery and how it goes with that awesome light blue-gray exterior hue. The owner here resisted the temptation to fit a silly wooden dash, which is a commendable display of wisdom, restraint and good taste.
The real show-stopper is at the rear, of course. Now that’s legroom! More space than a Rolls-Royce or anything Cadillac is currently producing. More exclusivity, too. Love the Twin Peaks floor mats. Just add some red curtains, a dancing dwarf and a statue, and turn this into a mystifying backwards-talking Lynchean nightmare on wheels. Not sure what that is at the base of the seat, by the way – a heater, perhaps?
It’s funny that the person who paid for this (or painstakingly made it himself in his garage over the better part of a decade, as the case may be) did not bother removing the donor car’s Rover badge, which always looks so incongruous to European eyes on a classic Mini.
On balance, this looks pretty damn good. The only issue I have with it is the angle of the rear doors’ window frame, which would have looked much better if it had been more exactly parallel to the rest of the C-pillar, or worked better with that seam running down the back end. The B-pillar is also a bit massive, but I suppose that’s harder to address — most of the other conversions have one about this wide.
The real worry would be how the extra length and weight affects the Mini’s legendary dynamics. This one is an automatic, so we’re already talking about a pretty subdued performer. Adding 50% more car to this Mini most probably results in a glacially slow vehicle. The longer wheelbase would probably not hurt the car’s famous roadholding, at any rate.
That being said, giving the Mini a few extra vitamins and ditching the slushbox in favour of a manual would probably suffice to make this car a worthwhile endeavour. The fat B-pillar and weird C-pillar make the exterior a bit clumsy, but that’s countered by the amazing amount of interior space and the overall finish of this car, which was jaw-droppingly excellent.
As a fan of the classic Mini (because, come on, who isn’t?) and a believer in world peace, I say we should all try and get a long. Like an extra foot long. And a couple extra doors, because those lucky rear passengers deserve a means of ingress and egress too. I kind of want one of these now. Who’s with me?
This is my nomination for best title of the year so far!
One more Mini rarity to add on the table, the South African Woseley 1000.
https://www.aronline.co.uk/around-the-world/leyland-south-africa/mini/ How many still survive is hard to know.
We did it was called The Austin 1100, 1300 and America. To small. There was the 1800.
“Just add some red curtains, a dancing dwarf and a statue, and turn this into a mystifying backwards-talking Lynchean nightmare on wheels…”
Don’t forget Bill Hader in an Ed Hardy T-shirt. “New York’s hottest club is…”
A Major Mini! The oxymoron of the year! It’s both big and small at the same time! Nicely done!
The ride might be better than original with the extra wheelbase but with the extra size it is more like the awful fat Minis BMW churn out now, I;d take a Clubman 1275 S any day but not a stretchy version, youd lose too much of the chuckability the originals had.
That’s a hard pass for me. The only reason I have any attraction to the original Mini is because they’ve always been described as having “go cart” like handling.
Adding 50% more car to this Mini most probably results in a glacially slow vehicle
It looks a lot less than 50% to me. In fact, i did a bit of measuring, and according to my calculations, I came up with exactly 14%. Or an 18 inch stretch. Which probably added no more than about 10-15% of additional weight, as it was all in the empty middle of the body, and no mechanical elements. So it doesn’t affect performance or handling very much either. At 138″ long, it’s still 15″ shorter than a new MINI Cooper!
And the legroom in the rear is deceptive too. You’re apparently looking at the picture as if it were a big car. it’s an original Mini, so the dimensions are much smaller. Based on the original legroom and adding 18″, I get to about 31″ total legroom. A modern RR has some 43″, and a Cadillac Escalade has 41.7″. There’s no comparison.
The rear seat in a Mini is minute, and sits very low on the floor, and one has to bring up the knees to sit back there. This makes it closer to normal, even though it may look like a lot.
The featured car is a Rover mini (with the common retro-fit Mk1 tail lights and grill) so it will have the 1275 engine, which is far from slow. The wheel-arch flares indicate that it retains the wider wheels of the late Rover mini as well. Shame about the auto transmission, but I think this car would retain the mini fun factor.
The chrome strip that runs around the outside of the flares hides them quite nicely – I quite like the way they’ve gone about getting the “early mini” look.
Regarding the auto – it’s very straightforward to swap in a manual engine and gearbox, of which there are plenty available. You need to change the front subframe as well, but again, there’s no shortage of those out there.
It’s not horrible looking, actually far better than if you’d just described it to me without visuals. The rear legroom is astounding, my 32″ inseam would have quite a bit of lebensraum there (32″ is on the smaller (Klein) side of things I believe, perhaps why I have headroom issues sometimes).
The ride must be pretty decent although the wheels and tires are still small. What a find in Japan where a small car is ubiquitous, to have a custom very long version of one.
Also, the reason the slant of the rear side window doesn’t match that of the C pillar is because they re-used a front door window frame (backwards), negating the need to fabricate one from scratch, as well as the window glass too. They undoubtedly used a front door as the starting point for building the rear door.
From the last photo, if the weld-seam had been removed, the C pillar slant mismatch would’ve been much less obvious.
You’re right on that.
Out of the 6 car photo lineup, that center left one in white demonstrates this.
Much cleaner and acceptable without the seams -my favorite!
Agreed!
I think you’re right on that.
That’s why my favorite in the 6-photo lineup is the center left one in white. Nice and clean without the seam/gutters.
From the first and last photos, if the weld-seam had been removed, the C pillar slant mismatch would’ve been much less obvious.
This 4-door reminds me of the numerous visits I made to Roland Fox, the former managing director at Vanden Plas. He would pull out copious numbers of photos of various prototypes VDP made, many of them BMC vehicles that had been lengthened, or 2-door cars made into 4-door vehicles. In the mid to late 1980s I was researching the Vanden Plas company, and I wrote to Mr. Fox. I received a very cordial invitation to visit him the next time I was in England!
The first time I visited Mr. Fox, it was over near the old Vanden Plas works at Kingsbury, a northern suburb of London. He picked me up at the tube station in a very unusual vehicle, an Austin 3 liter long wheelbase saloon with 3 rows of seats, the center row made of 2 forward facing folding jump seats. I’m attaching a photo of the car Mr. Fox gave me, it was taken in front of the VDP factory, probably around 1961.
I’m pretty sure the car resides today at the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust in Gaydon, Warwickshire, England. [If you’ve not visited the museum, this is a “Must see” when visiting the UK.]
I’m thinking the wider B pillar is probably necessary as stiffening structure for both structural twist, as well as having enough meat to hang a door on.
For some reason I’m having trouble getting my mind around the proportions of this thing, and the size relative to the 1100/1300. So off to my reference library I go……
Paul reckons it’s eighteen inches longer. That would still bring it in at eight inches shorter than the 1100/1300. Okay, my mind is holding that picture. But the 1100/1300 is five inches wider (round figures) which forcibly reminded me of how narrow the old Mini was.
So, fairly cramped laterally, but that rear legroom is astounding! And I like it all the more because it doesn’t look like a cartoon car like so many stretched vehicles do.
I see it’s an automatic !! I’ve driven an automatic Mini – not a pleasant experience.
My Countryman, the second- and longest-term Mini I had, was much more stable in high-speed (relatively!) bends than the sedan had been just because of that extra 4″ of wheelbase. My mechanic in Menlo Park killed’em in auto crosses with his very hopped-up Traveller, though as much plexiglass as legal helped too.
I would think, though, that any stretch much over that would make for a pretty stodgy ride … and we won’t even get into the rather sad stretch-limo Minis I’ve seen at shows.
Using the 84-inch wheelbase of the 4-door Mini prototype BMC developed as a guide, you are probably looking at a length of about 124.2-inches / 3154mm or the equivalent of a 550cc Era K-Car in terms of anything other than engine size and a few other things.
Could image it being used on early 850 and 998 models of the Mini before the 1098 and 1275 units inevitably find their way into the 4-door Mini, at least on upmarket and coachbuilt Minis as well as making the Elf/Hornet more useful then they were as booted 2-doors. The addition of a hatchback to create a 5-door Mini would have completed the transformation and extended the competitive life of the Mini quite a bit more against newer rivals, yet concede the Mini would have needed more thorough updates and been re-positioned in the City Car class rather than the Supermini segment.