You know it really hard to justify the logic with the Top Gear team. They dislike the Beetle yet enthuse about the Mini. The Mini in its standard form is certainly no petrol head's car. It has absolutely no character or build quality whatsoever, with the crash resistance of a wet cornflake packet. You feel squashed up in a small box with your butt on the tarmac and knees in your face, looking up at other cars and watching the propshafts underneath trucks.:x

However, its claim to fame, making it in some quarters 'The Car of the Century' over the Beetle, is being the first car with a the space-saving transverse mounted engine that pioneered modern motoring. Unfortunately this wretched box on wheels cannot actually claim that, because the Mini's Greek designer, Alex Issigonis stole the idea from the Germans. German car maker DKW were fitting tranverse mounted engines in their cars back as far as the 1930's, and in particular fitting it to vans in the 1940's.:shock:

All a bit like Porsche swiped ideas from Tatra for the Volkswagen, I guess.:oops:

But then again, it took the Germans to make the Mini into something of a decent car, albeit now the size of a family hatchback.:roll:

Rattletrap wrote: