1968 Austin America

They're both fine cars.

The Austin America is not a Mini. That's probably the question I have to answer most often: "Is that a Mini?" No, it isn't. You can tell a Mini because it says Mini on it. The Mini is also much smaller than this car. The Mini looks like you could pick it up and put it in your pocket. The Austin just looks like a small car -- it actually looks a good deal smaller than it is. The Mini, on the other hand, looks larger than it is, and it still looks incredibly small.

The America is properly described as an ADO16 -- 'ADO' for 'Austin Drawing Office', and '16' to differentiate it from other products of the Drawing Office. The Mini was the ADO15, for example (further proof that this is not a Mini), and the Bugeye Sprite was ADO13.

In the 1960s and 1970s, British Motor Corporation and then British Leyland produced a number of 'badge-engineered' cars that were effectively identical except for the brand image. General Motors has long done the same thing, and as a business strategy it hasn't done anything for them in the long run, either.

Anyway. In Britain, the ADO16 was generally sold as an '1100' (because the engine was 1098 cc), and later as a '1300', with a 1275cc engine. You could get the same car as a Morris, an Austin, an MG, a Riley, a Wolseley, or a Vanden Plas. The Vanden Plas was more luxurious -- even sporting little picnic tables in the back seat -- the MG more sporty, and so on. They were all the same car underneath, though.

You can see what I believe is an Australian TV ad for a Morris version here.

In the United States, most ADO16s were sold in the Austin America guise. This is one of them.

The America was billed by BMC as 'the perfect second car' and aimed squarely at the Volkswagen Beetle. Now. Alec Issigonis -- the designer of this car, the Mini, and the Morris Minor -- was an automotive genius, the Greco-British answer to Dr. Porsche.

The Mini, whose technical innovations are the underpinnings of the ADO16, was every bit as innovative as the KdF-wagen and the Beetle. The Mini's innovations have even been more influential than the Volkswagen's -- the Mini was, in 1959, the first car with a transverse engine and front-wheel drive, a pattern that nearly all cars today follow.

All of that said, the ADO16 (i.e. Austin America) was not as good a car as the Volkswagen -- though my opinion may be skewed a bit as I've only ever driven Americas with the automatic transmission -- and it didn't do all that well in the USA. Note that this should in no way be interpreted as a serious criticism of the ADO16. The only cars that can seriously contend for the Best Car Ever title are the VW Type 1 (Beetle) and the Mini. Nobody would ever nominate the Volkswagen Type 3 (i.e. fastback/squareback) for this category. The fact that BMC's similar riff on the Mini is as good as it is should merit special attention.

The ADO16 is a lot better looking than the Volkswagen, in any case, with a body designed by Pininfarina.