The sun seekers (1)

I'm off for a holiday for some time, but not without leaving you with no Maximum Mini stories. So here's a little series on Mini based sunshine cars that I wrote some years ago for Mini Magazine. Enjoy!

Apart from the obvious Volkswagen based Beach Buggy, the Mini proved to be a great base for a fun car too. Jeroen Booij looks at the best-known Mini derivatives for sunbathers; only to find out they all came from the south coast. Evidently not a coincidence.

First there was the Beach Car. An open top Fiat 500 or 600 named ‘Jolly’ with pastel paint job, wicker seats and a roof like a Wall’s parasol. They were totally distinct from the Beach Buggies that came much later. Beach Cars were there to carry rich people from their hotel or yacht to the Mediterranean beach or boulevard, and back. They oozed an atmosphere of Brigitte Bardot, Monte Carlo princesses and Cannes Film Festivals of the sixties’ heydays.
A Beach Buggy, of course, is for burning up and down dunes. More Steve McQueen then Grace Kelly; macho instead of elegant. The two are miles apart. But other then the coachbuilt Fiats or the Volkswagen based buggies, the Mini could be both. Styled by BMC’s chief stylist, Dick Burzi, an official Mini Beach Car went into limited production in Longbridge. No more then 16 were built, with most going to more suitable climates. Survivors are rare.


But then there was the other side of the scale, as the Mini proved to be a terrific base for a Beach Buggy too. When the American Beach Buggy craze reached the UK in the late sixties, some folks decided to come up with a design for the home market, based on the good old Mini. Funnily they were all created on the south coast. First of them was stylist Barry Stimson, who’d happened to have seen a Volkswagen based Myers Manx buggy in Canada when he was there in 1968. He immediately liked it, saying, “I thought it was so refreshingly different so I decided to design one myself. Not Volkswagen based but around the Mini.” In the plane back to England Stimson made a first sketch and back home in Chichester he started working on a prototype. He rented a hangar in Brighton and started on a tiny budget. Stimson: anything that vaguely had the shape you needed was used. The headlamp pods were moulded from a bra.” When the first Stimson Mini Bug was finished in early 1970 the result looked surprisingly like his early sketch. Reactions were quite overwhelming and the little Bug even appeared on national television. Under the car’s doorless and roofless fibreglass body lay a simple square tube frame to which the Mini’s front subframe was mounted. The rear used the Mini’s trailing arms and motorcycle coils springs and damper units, while the floor was plywood. It was sold as a basic kit less engine for £170 and a complete car was offered from £295. Initially the car was offered with a low perspex windscreen as an extra, but when this was found illegal a more conventional glass screen was offered.


By 1972 Barry Stimson found it time for a second model and suddenly there was the Stimson Safari Six: a twelve feet long six-wheeled pick-up, based on the Mini too. According to Stimson it was a bit of a mix between Mini Pick-up, Moke and Traveller but also Range Rover and Renault 4! It was offered for sale in 1972 at £800 all in, which meant it was even fitted with a hood that covered not driver and passenger plus the complete rear end. Like the Mini Bug, the Safari Six was based on a tubular chassis to which a Mini engine-subframe and the fibreglass body was attached. Body panels were colour impregnated in ‘pirate red’ or ‘golden yellow’. The rear four wheels used Mini swinging arms with Girling spring/damper units. It had a zip-up side screen that could be used as a door for the driver. Stimson used the Mini’s standard windscreen for the Safari Six, but placed it in a new frame to which the weather equipment could be attached with push buttons. With twelve extra inches the rear track was considerably wider then that of a Mini helping the designer to create a large pick-up rear deck with fold down bench seat and lockable under floor ‘boot’. Unfortunately, the Safari Six had been a rather big investment for Stimson and after only a few were made the company went to the receiver. The rights for building the car were taken over by a Welsh company that planned to relaunch the car with Ford Fiesta- or Peugeot engine but it never happened.