It's Maximum Mini movie time once more, as I keep on stumbling upon exploitation films with Mini based cars in them. We've seen a James Bond spoof, a French Nouvelle Vague flick, a Spanish comic book adaptiation and a British Science Fiction movie, all featuring some very unusual Mini powered creatures. But where is Hollywood in this list? Don't look further as I've found it. Below you'll find a scene from 'The Village of the Giants' - your typical mid-1960's American B-movie, made for the drive in. It's about a group of partying teens who get lost in a California village, turn into giants and start terrorizing the village folk. Now that is a plot.
The cool bit comes when Surfite comes in, my favourite vehicle from 'Kalifornia Kar Kustomizer' Ed Roth. The late Roth built the car in 1964 after he found a Mini (not a Cooper) in a scrap yard. It's an asymetric single seater with a very short wheelbase and surfboard carrier next to the driver. I understand that Village of the Giants is not the only movie it appears in - it also speeds along in this other gem of the Beach Party film genre: Beach Blanket Bingo. That one is about a motorcycle gang kidnapping a pop star who is finally rescued by a mermaid named Lorelei... Surfite lives in the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada these days.
Ed Roth's Surfite can only carry a board and a surfer, well... maybe two
Picture courtesy imcdb.com
Surfite is said to have a 1269cc Mini engine, although it was based on a Mini 850
Picture courtesy tumbler.com
There's a nifty 1/25 scale plastic model of it, I've built a couple over the years. Interesting twist to that kit - a friend who was working for the first time on his Mini was having deja vu when he pulled the engine out, he was sure he'd see one before. He finally figured out why it looked so familiar; he'd built the Surfite model in high-school and it had a detailed Mini engine in the model.
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