Maximum Mini: Stimson's stories (5)

Thursday, 26 January 2023

Stimson's stories (5)

I promised to write more about the late Barry Stimson after the news reached me that he had sadly died on one of the last days of the year (click here). There really is a lot of material in words and pictures so where to start? I once asked Barry how the original Mini Bug came about and he told me the story in some detail of how it happened. So here we go, over to Barry himself:

“I was in Vancouver with my Mk1 wife where we lived in a house belonging to American hippies, provided by the father of one of the hippies. The house was in Horseshoe Bay, a really pretty place. ‘Hey man’, they said to me, and we joined them. I was designing houses over here in the UK but I was having a hard time as the houses I designed were quite radical looking and the council planning department were reluctant to pass them, as they looked different. I thought I could build them over in Canada. Then my Mk1 wife decided that one of the hippies was more of a hippie then I was, so I came back with two children to the UK, leaving her in Canada. I’d seen a Meyers Buggy in Vancouver and thought I could build something like that in the UK. In the plane back I made a very simple line drawing – it is still representable for the Mini Bug and looks very simple. The reason for doing a Mini based buggy was that the Mini had its engine, suspension and gearbox all in one subframe. It meant I didn’t have to reinvent all of it. But it was a really smart thing, too. All the stuff that I do is sort of radical but to be radical it doesn’t have to be complicated.”

"Back in the UK I rented a Nissen hut on a derelict farm in Chichester and that’s where the work started in the winter of 1969/1970. It was bloody freezing. Coral and Sean, my children, were 6 and 4 at the time and we were living in a camper van, parked in the building itself. Looking back it probably wasn’t particularly good for the kids, but they liked it and have good memories of the time. To start with I designed some toys for them, all out of pinewood. It was for them to play with, but I decided to market them too. But by the time I got the toys made but the Mini Bug was underway and I had no time left for the toys. ‘HPO 69H’ was a £20 or £30 Mini Van that was used as a base vehicle. It took over a week to make the plug and another week to make the mould from the plug. The chassis was lofted on the floor in a lock up garage. I didn’t employ anybody whatsoever; although I understand a while ago a chap said he’d built the first 100 bugs. Well, we didn’t even build a hundred of them I believe! There was an up hand welder involved though, who’d worked for the navy dock and there was also a laminator who was working in the same laid down farm. The guy was probably one of them who worked three huts down and who I think gave me a hand. We made jigs and the navy guy did the chassis’. The first body which came straight out of the mould looked horrible with rough edges and I cut it off with scissors and then made the flare around it. It still looked ugly so I thought let’s dress it up a little more. We rounded the edges off, changed the screen and put on a Targa bar. Everything sort of grew, it evolved.”

“I was at the time always looking for the easiest way out to create shapes. If I could take a quick moulding of an existing shape to give me a curve or a shape. The scoops for the lights of that car were made from breadbin lids. It was all very low-tech but quick; I wasn’t using any modeling clay or anything. The windscreen was made of Perspex and to bend it I used an old electric fire to heat it. That was changed quickly from Mk1 to Mk2 with very little Mk1s built. I would be really surprised if there’s any Mk1 car left (one turned up last year - click here). I probably built just five or six. The difference was that the car’s body was now separate with the whole front of the Mk2 lifting off.”