From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
ISSIGONIS: Arguably the greatest and certainly the most colourful car designer of modern times, Alexander Issigonis was born in Smyrna (now Izmir), Turkey, in 1906. His father was a naturalised British subject of Greek descent who had married the daughter of a wealthy Brewer with a branch brewery in Smyrna. Alec's father had a marine engineering business there and it soon became apparent that his son had a marked talent for engineering.
At the end of the first World War, British families in Turkey were evacuated for their safety and the Issigonis family arrived penniless in Britain. Alec's father died en-route at Malta. Aged just 16 when he arrived in Britain, Alec enrolled in a three-year engineering course at Battersea Polytechnic and by 1928 had found a job with an engineering consultancy designing a semi-automatic transmission. He then moved to the drawing office of Humber at Coventry before Robert Boyle, the chief engineer of Morris, offered him a job at Cowley, where he developed an independent front suspension.
Fascinated with suspension systems, Alec wrote that "I found that cars ran much straighter and were more directionally stable if I put a couple of sandbags on the front bumper". Issigonis also had some pretty revolutionary ideas for the design of a small saloon and was eventually put in charge of two draughtsmen who interpreted his ideas.
By 1942 he had completed a scale model which featured the engine placed 'outrageously far forward' and no conventional chassis. It was 1947 before the prototype first ran and when Nuffield saw the new Morris Minor for the first time he was furious, Alec Issigonis later recalling he called it 'a poached egg, and everything under the sun!' Issigonis was not present on that occasion and only met Nuffield twice, the second time being when "we'd made a million Morris Minors. Then he had the grace to thank me".
Interestingly, in 1945 examples of the Volkswagen Beetle had been sent to every major British car firm with a request that they design a "cheap, good-looking car capable of being produced in sufficient quantities to get the full benefits of mass-production". The response of Humber was typical of the attitudes of the time: "We do not consider that the design represents any special brilliance. . . (and) is not to be regarded as an example of first-class design to be copied by the British Industry."
But despite the Morris Minor's unprecedented success, after the 1952 merger with Austin, Issigonis - who hated mergers - left to join Alvis. However, the projected car he was to build there never made it to production and although three prototypes were built, these were later destroyed.
In 1955, Issigonis returned to become technical director of what had now become BMC, where, of course, he went on to design the Mini, the car which was to rewrite the design rules and become an icon for a generation.
Today, Issigonis, who was later knighted and died in 1988, is remembered most for the Mini, but it is a measure of the man that those who worked with him recall his charm and his artistic approach to car design, as well as his often eloquent turn of phrase.