Mini R50 is 20 years old, and Goes for a drive

hello today you join me at the wheel of my very own mini cooper from 2001. in fact it's may the first this is its 20th birthday it's 20 years old today so let's have a look at where these cars came from how they were built and what they'd like to drive by the way if you like this video please do consider hitting the subscribe button while you're watching hello welcome to furious driving and today may the 1st 2021 it's the 20th birthday the build day if you like anniversary of this my mini cooper the 202nd mini built off the line so this is actually a pre-production pilot build kind of car very very early production there are a few changes from the standard car but so as it's two decades on the new mini isn't really all that new anymore so let's take a look at the car itself that shocked the world and the mini community anyway and uh and talk about how this thing came to be in the first place but before we do that i just want to take a moment to thank this video sponsor skillshare if you've not come across skillshare it's an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creators you can explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in thousands of classes across creative self-improvement and business topics now as someone coming from a stills photography background the world of video has been a steep learning curve so for me skillshare has loads of filmmaking and editing classes which i wish i'd had access to when i was trying to figure out final cut pro at the beginning but as someone who's always trying to learn and improve all the things i do i've been delving into benjamin household's classes on final cut pro color grading to make my videos look better but i'm looking forward to exploring more about music and design and there's always more to learn about photography and as the classes are broken down to convenient bite-sized chunks it's not a problem to fit them in around my always busy day but here's the best bit listening to experts talk about their passions is always interesting and rewarding it's curated specifically for learning so there are no ads and they're always adding new premium classes so you can stay focused and go wherever your creativity takes you and it's about ten dollars which is about seven pounds a month with annual subscription and the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description we'll get a free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity so if the mini have been a normal car and if the company that built it had been a normal company it would have been replaced a long time ago at some point in the late 60s more than likely in fact there were multiple attempts to replace it throughout the decades including by alec izagonis himself who in 1968 proposed the 9x which is a slightly larger hatchback version looked a little bit like a renault five and you can still see it in gaydon today i think um so even he knew the writing was on the wall for the mini many decades ago throughout the 70s there were several more proposals of different cars to replace the mini but through lack of budget and management infighting nothing ever came of it until finally a new mini emerged in 1980 the metro arrived the mini metro which didn't replace the mini because it wasn't a normal company so even though the mini was costing more to build than they were selling it for they sold it on by the 1990s rover new times were changing and they were going to struggle to keep the car current buyers tastes were changing emissions were going to be a problem drive-by noise was going to be a problem and encap was going to be a major issue because there was not much structural strength in an original mini and no way of engineering an airbag into it so all these factors meant the days of the original mini were numbered whatever happened so the rover design team under gordon's sked started working on various replacement concepts to bring in the new however by the time the bmw bought rover in january 1994 nothing had really progressed very far so they opened the field up to everyone pretty much it was effectively a design competition they took in ideas and concepts from rovers designers at canley the bmw designers at design works in california even gigaro were offered the chance to come up with the idea that would become the new mini the british team at rover had different ideas to the bmw team their thinking was to start where isagonias had started as well the 10-foot concept and build a car for today around those same ideas and principles whereas frank stephenson did the man who actually did design the car his idea was to take the mini as a starting point and he actually sat down and drew a different mini for every decade imagining that the car had been replaced decade on decade generation on generation so by the time you got to the millennium you weren't looking at the second chassis you were looking at the fourth or fifth so he drew all these different versions and this is the version that came up with the r50 is the evolution it's not a new concept it's taking the mini from its starting point to where it is today ultimately it was a unanimous decision both bmw and rover people agreed this took the spirit of the mini and moved on into the 21st century now being a mini is more than just having a badge on the front and frank stevenson felt he captured the dna of the original car and so did the board of rover and bmw which is why it pressed ahead and so there are various things which have stayed very much the same but obviously have changed and updated although it couldn't be a 10 foot car long anymore like the original mini the design brief was to make it 3.6 meters because then they can get a five-star end cap they could build enough safety into that size of a car now looking at the front of the car the two major things you'll notice first of all are the headlights and the grille the headlights ape the original mini headlights being large and round and right out in the corners but obviously to get more streamlining my aerodynamics are now elongated slightly and pushed back raked back a little bit to get some better arrow then we have the grill which looks very similar in shape and characteristics to the original mini but you might notice that the top half is in the bonnet and the bottom half is in the bumper that's what's it for manufacturing reasons and the feeling that frank stephenson was going for was this bulldog spirit mini thing and he kind of felt this was like the mouth of the car so it actually became more of a face because this is actually the mouth of it and this bonnet was a bone of contention now the reason we've got the big clam shell on the front of the car is because of this line here this diagonal strike into the wheel arch because on the original mini there was a flange where two pressings met and were bonded that's not an issue on this particular car but in order to keep that really significant detail of the original that was necessary to do this and rover engineers initially said they didn't want to they couldn't do it it was too big of a pressing at the time however they pushed forward and they managed to figure out a way of pressing something this big they were concerns the engineers about the flexibility and the movement of the bonnet so the headlamps are now mounted into the bonnet itself and it has latches at either side so it stays locked down when the car is in motion now a number of design tricks we use to make the car first of all look like the original car in a way and also to appear wider and sportier more hunkered down on the road first of all we've got these tail lights which normally when you look at a tail light it's flush with the boot line or even into the boot line but having it as a separate item here in the rear wing it actually makes the car look much wider on the road down here we've got this chrome strip in the bumper which sort of apes the original in fact it looks about the same size as the original mini bumper pressed into the plastic of the uh the modern impact bumpers and looking at the sides of the car the body work curves out much in the same way as the original mini does and then the glass that what they refer to as the tumble home or the angle is very very vertical so you uh a bigger area inside the car and also makes the car appear wider when you look at it from behind as does this blacked out area of glass here again making the car appear visually bigger there's a great story about the exhaust pipe tip here on the back of the car and this comes from frank stephenson himself the design team are working late in tonight with the clay styling buck the full size model of the car to be and they're going to present it to management the next day and at the last minute someone noticed there was no exhaust pipe on it and so i think it was frank stevenson himself took a budweiser can cut the bottom off it and shoved it into the back of the clay and that's why we have the beer can exhaust tip on the back of these cars under the bonnet is a really clever piece of packaging to make everything fit in such a small place you've got power steering air conditioning power brakes the battery the radiator alternating all the usual stuff it's all crammed in here and it is really tight to find things but they managed to do it and worth mentioning what we're looking down here is the the car is inherently very very strong it's designed to pass the euro end cap with a five star rating which it i believe it did rover wanted to use wishbones but bmw were adamant it was a bmw product it was going to be struts to the front z axle at the back no question no argument so that's where it went that meant the front of the car had to be incredibly stiff which means there's a two-piece box section of chassis rails here at the front with a meter and a half of continuous welding which means the car is incredibly stiff and that was not just great for safety it was great for handling as well now the actual engine was a real bone of contention the design of the car the external design was signed off in 1996 no arguments no changes this is how it states rover engineers were assuming it was going to be the k series that went under this bonnet because that'll be a natural progression it was in much of the rest of the range it'll be easy to use accessible it's compact they knew it and all the rest of it however bmw had never made a decision they weren't sure what they were going to use and the problem was the k series was too tall brother engineers said great just re-engineering the bonnet redesigned the clamshell bmw nope not doing that we've we've made a decision and the designer frank stephenson says no everyone doesn't know wolf van ritzel said leave it with me i'll come up with a solution but ultimately he announced that bmw and chrysler are going to engineer this 1.6 liter chain cam driven four cylinder engine now i've got the bonnet up i'll show you a couple of things which mean that this is an early car first of all you can always tell when a mini was built because the label with the data on it is down here on the inner wing this car built may the first and we know it's 2001 car now two things you can see here is it's lots of undercoat showing that's because the color coat was very thin in the under bonnet area and the scuttles are made of larger but much more fragile hexagons right so climbing into the car you'll notice a continuity jump because i've put a jumper on it's chilly outside all of a sudden the other thing you'll notice is that compared to the original car which was tiny on the outside but huge on the inside this is a bit bigger on the outside but not massively massive on the inside uh alex morton was really critical of this he hated it he said it was an example of exactly what you'd do wrong he was a man scorn i think but sitting in the car now you do feel actually quite roomy you've got loads of headroom the car is quite tall for its size you've got lots of elbow room because the the way the doors are sculpted back you can put your elbows virtually into the doors and you've got room in between two people so there's lots and lots of room the design was considered retro but frank stephenson said it wasn't retro it was a development of the original right let's take you for a walk around the interior of the car now climbing in you'll notice the big one piece squeezy door handle to let you in and also the fact it is a pillarless door very sporty and elegant now this car should have a stainless or aluminium trim piece it's one on the passenger side but this car sadly has lost it a long time ago now for the most part the early cars the pre-july launch date cars came with the collido red fabric interior some of the very early ones had a groove in the middle of the uh the front seats which this one is slightly too late by a matter of days to get that i think the only exceptions to this were some very very high spec uh coopers which were available in silver with black leather and a sunroof there's only limited spec options of these very early cars these were standard on all these cars this was a red interior option for a very short time with the red door cards red basically everything apart from the carpet red door cards red seats and red trim but this was discontinued a matter of months into production another thing for these early cars these pre-july launch date cars are the pedals have got the mini logo written in them this is unique to these wire edge cars all the production cars were sold to the public on a 51 plate they didn't have this so i do have a spare accelerator in case this ever breaks now on the dashboard we do have this big chunky two spoke steering wheel with a mini logo in the center and little horn buttons here on the side that's quite a horn and a half now you'll notice this silver center section of the dashboard runs the full width of it and no uh glove box but we do have an airbag on the left-hand side we have this big central speedo so visible to the entire car basically all your warning lights the odometer temperature fuel pretty much everything is here in this one central dial apart from which i don't think the ones got only the cooper's got this was the tachometer here above the steering wheel and you may have noticed the air vents as i sort of whisked across this silver panel little around eyeball vents which have a kind of a retro feel to them as well the whole design does hold together really nicely because everything just feels perfectly matched to each other above all of this we've got a massive flat t-shelf area a slight tilt down but not too bad you could you can stand a mug on there there's a smaller flatter area here for condiments for the back sandwiches lots of room for for a picnic if you want big air vintage as well so lots of ventilation into the car although it does feel like a car that needs the air conditioning to work it doesn't have like a free flow of air through it so if the air con is broken it does get really really warm in this car one thing you might also notice is there's no glove box lid down here these early cars only came with a tray on either side it's got a rubber base which can be lifted out to be cleaned and it's got little scallops in there to stop things rolling around too much it doesn't work they do roll around far too much and there is a matching one on the driver's side as well also there's your headlamp leveling control as well now in the center we've got flanked by these big silver columns basically uh all our heating ventilation and personal controls if you want radio cd player was an option cassette player was an option on some cars if you check the build sheet you can see what your car would have had they've got the blowers and fans air conditioning of course and we've got these controls which were really unique to the mini and were a real standout feature which got common turned on all the time these little chrome toggles for the windows the fog lights essential locking and each one is flanked and blocked off from the one next to it but these little semi-circular hoops later models actually got more of these switches up on the ceiling in this particular car we've only got a little lozengy mirror and we've got a clock up here now down here at the base of these big silvery legs we've got two tiny tiny cup holes which are basically totally totally useless um because they are really short really small and directly underneath the switch panels it's utterly re utterly pointless there is the option you can get of a little tray for putting augments in that sits behind here and this car doesn't have that but it wasn't optional extra and i am looking for one so if i whenever it turns up on ebay i will grab it a 12 volt socket down here and then you got your 5 speed gearbox with a lovely little half leather half chrome gear knob this is uh a replacement gear knob on this car but it is exactly the same got it from the mini parts department so it's definitely the same item as it was previously electric mirrors which is down here and the handbrake also fits in this big kind of bold chunky style we've got this chunky silver rings around the cup holders which aren't any good for cups around the gear shift everything's very chunky and bold and bulky and this handbrake is no exception got the leather insert um and we've got the silver paint and obviously the leather gator moving back we have got the one cup holder which is any good everything else is useless but this one is actually quite handy then we have the doors themselves this big big armrest dorple thing is a really nice design this whole massive lozenge big round shape that just gives so much character and definition to the door it recesses really deep in this as i said you can put your elbow in there makes the car feel wider the bottom of it is big and open so you're a huge tray for stuff in both doors really useful and we have the sort of exposed partially exposed screw fittings which is very unusual on a car these days to have any fixtures or fittings visible at all you have to look quite hard to see the screw heads in there but that has been left open interestingly then we have this nice chromey door hand which is solid cast metal i think the later ones may have been plastic but the early cars were cast metal and that's in a double ring little figure eight with the tweeter and the main speaker is down here in the bottom of the door so we've got pretty decent audio from this now looking into the back of the car we have the same red seats red side panels lots of exciting colors and interest going on so you'll notice we've got two central seat belt holders or buckles but nothing for a third passenger just two little bucket seats each side panel does have a big loud speaker and a huge cubby hole so you can stuff all kinds of useful things in there make the car very useful you'll find now finally the boot it is not a massive boot by any means um this is not a car for want to be gangsters who want to be taking unwilling victims any place because this will not fit anything bigger than a spaniel and that will be an unhappy span you like that it does however have a light i've disconnected this one because it wouldn't turn off and it was draining the battery and and a 12 volt socket so you can charge things in the boot and it has a 50 50 split rear seat as well so it is potentially quite a useful and practical car you can get a lot of stuff in this space if you uh flip those seats down under the carpet we have got a tool kit which would have contained once upon a time an inflation kit but i don't know where that's gone i've now used that space for a set of jump blades because you never know your tow hook that kind of thing is all under the boot carpet because this car was designed to run on run flat tyres there is no spare wiggle stand you can go underneath this car and install in place of this plastic panel here an actual spare wheel uh hanging kit and that is something i intend to do at some point because i've taken the run flats off and put some quite nice continental sport contacts on instead it runs so much nicer on them but if i ever get flat i'm stranded now the last thing to mention is this roof because the early cars didn't have any bracing underneath the panel and so the whole thing wobbled and shook and it's very easy to dent it and you'll notice this car has got several dents across the roof because this whole panel is very fragile so getting comfortable in the new mini is pretty easy the seats are lovely and squishy they're old-school comfy like in they would have been in the 90s and they're adjustable for height and rake and lumber support and your seat belt mount is also possible to raise and lower to get exactly the right position to sit in now driving the thing is simplest to itself the pedals are surprisingly heavy for such a small car especially the clutch but it drives so easily and the engine is quite willing it's not the most brisk car in the world nor to 60 i think is over nine seconds so really not rapid at all 116 horsepower again not exactly gti hot hatch terrifying figures and of course the car is heavy as well designed very much in with safety and rigidity in mind the thing weighs in at over 100 kilos it's a lot of mass in this vehicle although there's no naught to 60 killer it is very very nimble through the corner surprisingly so in fact and the engine does feel a little bit more charismatic than it does in some of the other applications that used it i think some peugeots and obviously a number of chryslers have used the same engine one thing that is really good on this car is the steering they had friend robert's end of the engineering side they're wanting to use a fully electric um steering system but the chassis engineers just felt it was completely numb utterly dead no good at all for a car that was meant to be all about driving spirit and driving fun so they took the hydro electric system i'd run a trick straight and so we do have a steering system which is absolutely loaded with feel there's just a little bit of weight to the wheel but not too much and plenty of feedback from what's going on in front of you the gearbox is pretty good bmw had wanted to use a jet drag or get drag box uh but rover suggested and argued very successfully for the fact that the r65 gearbox they were using already was 100 pounds cheaper had less harmonic vibration issues so would be easier to package and just a smaller box in the first place so again far easier for internal packaging in that tiny tiny engine bay and so the rover engineers won the day now one of the real selling points of these cars was the big car feel from such a small vehicle 3.6 meters long but it rides and handles like something double that size it's so very composed on the road it's amazing and with the bmw style struts front suspension zx on the back it is really composed it may not be a straight line rocket but private has put it through some b roads and it grips on and is enormous fun and you can see how we're now on on a fast b road doing 60 miles an hour it's quiet it's smooth it's excellent it's a real all-rounder now probably the main reason the frank stephenson design won out over the uh other cars that were proposed is that this car really does uh just connect with the the look and feel of the original mini now at the time traditional mini owners were up in arms at being not a real mini anymore but he had designed it in such a way to evolve from the original car it was built in the same factory by many of the same people so in my eyes it is a continuation of a mark 5 escort is still an escort even if it's completely different to a mark 1 escort it's not the same car but it's the same family anyway the uh the british design team from rover cannley uh david saddlington uh roy axe um oliver legrice they had uh very different ideas they were starting off from scratch with uh only a minor styling nod towards the original car in fact the one they were favoring most was the spiritual concepts which was designed to be two different sizes to replace the mini and the metro but really it looked much more like a bulky imev rather than a mini replacement so it didn't really capture the mood quite enough and so as this was trading very much on the look and feel of the original mini uh path that that meant it really was becoming a bit of a fashion accessory and as a fashion accessory it meant you could accessorize and the accessory brochure on this car was is a tome of its own it was said that in the first few years of mini production around 20 of the sale or purchase price of most new cars was going on accessories you could do so much from just changing the wheels and putting fog lights and spotlights on the front to the different color wing mirrors different color roof you could put the covers on the back of the interior mirrors you could have the decals the union jacks on the roof the bonnet decals there was just endless options of personalization for making your mini very much your own and people loved it they absolutely lapped it up and when frank stephenson went over to fiat and designed the fiat 500. the same trick was used which is why you see so many different personalization options on the fiat 500s now you might be wondering why these pilot build cars exist at all um and if you look at the the classified ads for 2001 minis you will find that generally they are on a 51 plate now you might be wondering why these pilot build cars exist and how you spot them well the thing to look at is a number plate these are all on a wire registration and what is important to remember is that 2001 was the year the british number load system changed up until the middle of 2001 it had been the first letter of the number plate denoted what year the car was registered but from the middle of 2001 it was a two-figure thing and so 5-1 meant the second half of 2001 and all the customer minis that you find if you go scouring the classified ads will be on 51 plates but bmw needed cars for the press launch for dealer training technician training internal training and testing improving and of course i said just the pilot build itself so putting these things down the production line and working out exactly how they're going to screw them together fast enough to be a viable production product and so they registered i think around 600 of them on wire registration plates in early 2001. the earliest ones coming out i think in in april and quite a few more coming out in in may so this short period of time is the birthday period of the early minis there are photos of one or two cars on an x-plate because there had been pre-production cars around for a couple of years by this point in fact the car was first shown as a external mock-up on a punto platform at the munich motor show in 1997 so people knew what the car was going to look like for about four years before it actually hit the market and blind testing had happened before that with unbadged models put alongside potential rivals fiestas puntos that kind of thing but when they started the bmw mini network there wasn't the whole individual showrooms we have today each bmw dealer took on mini just had a small corner set aside with completely different branding that the fun exciting funky mini branding bright neons and matte black that was the vibe it was very very cool and trendy but pre-launch each dealership got one car and that was put under a shiny sheet in the showroom and that's where this car came in this was under the shiny sheet at scotl mini in leeds and on that customer invite only day this car had the sheet pulled off and this was the car those invited guests got to see and then sit in and push all the buttons and break that button off then it became a demo car for leeds mini in fact the response despite the fact that some people didn't like it classic mini owners were very much split on whether it was okay acceptable or the devil on wheels even as i mentioned earlier alex morton the designer of the hydro gas suspension of the original mini he had been involved in working on a replacement concept as well but his idea and his input into the project was dropped when bmw finalized it was going to be struts and z axle no hydra gas in this version he was extremely bitter i've actually met him a couple years after this car came out and he was not happy at all it's fair to say the mood of the lunch and the tone changed significantly as soon as this car was mentioned he thought it was too big he thought it was too heavy he thought they'd taken safety too far in making it as big and heavy as it is other people though were of a different mind john cooper for example he was more than happy to have his name put on the cooper and the cooper works he was very happy to continue his association with the brand he thought was a great thing and public opinion public reaction was generally very very good in fact it was so strong that when i first saw one of these at the nec motor show i think was nec in 2001 there were no cars you could get in on the ground floor the cars you could actually climb into and look at properly were upstairs and at the time i had now for 146 because i could show them that key and say i was thinking of changing from an alpha to a mini they let me upstairs and sit in one of things gave me a cup of tea was quite nice and i was pretty much all set to change my 146 for a red cooper with a white chili pack same as this a red car with white roof white wheels and white mirrors my only thing i decided on was the size of the wheels because it looks better with the bigger wheels and they engineered the suspension specifically to cope with the bigger wheels but it does ride more nicely on these smaller rims 15 inches anyway my alpha got hit in the back by a 38 ton truck and i became all safety conscious and i made a bad choice really knowing what i know now because i wouldn't have bought a freelander thinking bigger is better turns out that the uh this mini the r50 is definitely a stronger shell a stronger platform than the freelander if it was to be involved in an accident the internal wranglings between bmw and rover were really quite bitter rover engineers were absolutely excellent and really good at turning things around on a shoestring being up against it and so they came up with some really creative solutions that made the mini work it was a bmw project the idea of a replacement started under rover purely with every anglophile burn pitch strider i can't say his name properly um at the helm he wanted it built in britain so it carried on being a british product and for the majority of the development period it was it wasn't until he left the company in 1999 that things were taken even more in-house at bmw for the most part it was a bmw led but rover engineered project so there's a lot of rover parts and rover expertise in this car but with bmw direction and money behind it if you want to take a deeper dive into this because i can't go into all the detail necessary for the entire development story because it's a very very long convoluted tale uh check out the ar online website there's some really good uh background information to the development of this car great interview with frank stephenson as these cars have aged a few things have come to light the electrics have turned out to be a bit of an issue the airbag light seems to be a constant problem certainly on this car i think a few others as well the body control unit and ecu can throw a lot of issues as well on the whole i would say touch wood but there's nothing wooden in this car this has been a pretty good one considering this car okay started off as a dealer demonstrator in leeds went found its way onto the fence where i think it was passing between uh agricultural workers who were coming into the country to work for a season and selling it to the next rotation of people coming in from working for a season before going home again so it's got 14 owners on it and when i when i bought it it was cosmetically not very well looked after but mechanically seemed to have been serviced pretty well but this car just drives fantastically apart from the battery going flat i'll leave it parked up it's far too long at a time this has been a brilliant brilliant car i've had to do virtually nothing mechanical to it apart from just servicing so these can be tough cars it's also one of the few cars i've actually bought deliberately five years ago when these were 15 and we couldn't believe there was 15 years of the new mini i was doing a feature in uh modern mini magazine with the editor martin we were just blown away by the design of these cars and the fact that we both felt it was definitely going to be a future classic that was worth buying grabbing hold of one and holding on to for the future of course 20 years ago when this car came out it was just one car well two versions the mini cooper and the mini one no one knew back then that it was the start of well an empire these things absolutely exploded in popularity and now 20 years later four generations on i think it is we've had so many variations the clubman the convertible the mid club van they've never got the five-door mini okay the car has grown enormously and personally my humble opinion i do think the r50 the original though is the og is the best it's the one that captures the spirit of a classic mini the best it's also one i think drives the best as well the newer one says they've got bigger and bigger these ones just seem better and better in comparison what i've enjoyed is look at what was really quite an impressive and different car 20 years ago now that its replacement generations have evolved into a far bigger thing this has become a definite future classic if you've enjoyed this please as always hit like and subscribe and join me again next time driving something completely different

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 16,440

Rating: 4.9412918 out of 5

Keywords: car, cars, blog, vlog, retro, classic, classic car, retro car, motoring, mini, r50, r50 mini, first generation mini, early mini, pre production, prototype, pilot build, anniversary, birthday, 2001, 2021, 20 years, 2 decades, Mini Cooper, frank stephenson, frank stevenson, design, designer, car design, road test, test drive, car review

Id: EeZVJNCibno

Length: 33min 37sec (2017 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021