I Just Found Out About Mini-Based Jollys Only Six Decades Too Late: Cold Start

Lots of iconic European small cars had special versions of them made for resort use, as oddly specific as that may seem. We tend to call these “jollys” and they’re usually defined by having no doors, wicker seats, and some sort of alternative, more minimal roof. These were cars designed to take tanned, wealthy people from a luxurious boat to a luxurious building or to and from beaches, that sort of thing. Imagine The Girl from Ipanema playing nonstop.

The best-known and most popular version of these jollys (jollies?) has to be the Fiat 500 version. It’s pretty adorable, with pastel Easter egg colors and those wicker seats and little ropes to keep those rich people, filled to the gills with mai tais and G&Ts, from tumbling out onto the sun-baked pavement.

You know what I mean:

Of course, it wasn’t just the 500 that got this treatment; there were jollys made from Renault 4CVs, Fiat Multiplas, and, a bit later, a version of the Volkswagen Thing called the Acapulco that was very much a jolly, too.

Suprsingly absent from the usual assortment of cars made into jollys was the Mini. You’d think the Mini’s compact dimensions and clever packaging would have made it a popular choice for jollification, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case. That’s why I was so surprised when I saw this picture in the October 1961 issue of Sports Car Graphic that I was reading on the plane last night. I like to keep up with the latest news, you see. Anyway, the picture and the caption:

So, the picture describes the car as an “open sided, wicker seated version of the standard Austin Seven” and yet the only picture manages to be of the car from the one angle where we can’t see any of the things just described! Great job, Sports Car Graphic. What I can  see is a Mini with an unusual gridded grille and different turn indicators from the round “bullet” style I’d expect on a Mini of this era.

A bit of research revealed that there were 20 or less Mini Beach Cars built, and the one seen in the magazine I was looking at was almost definitely the one referenced here:

Alec Issigonis even famously drove one of these cars at the Mini Cooper launch press preview at the Chobham (now Longcross) test track in July 1961.

The article was about that Mini Cooper launch, so that had to be it. Looking around a bit more I found this car again, which appears to have been a one-off Mini Beach Car, this time based on a Wolseley Hornet/Riley Elf body, you know, the Mini-with-a-trunk ones:

That’s old Alec I in the lower pic, and these open Minis sure do look fun; too bad there was only the one made with the tacked-on-trunk body, because I kind of like it. You can see the distinctive grille and indicators in the upper image, too, confirming that’s what the Sports Car Graphic picture was from.

The rest of the Mini Beach Cars looked like this:

These were fun! Shame they only made a few. Later on the Austin Mini Moke, a more jeep-like vehicle built on the Mini platform, took over these sorts of roles, and lots of those were sold to resorts, so I suppose BMC managed to crack that lucrative resort market after all. Still, these Mini Beach Cars sure are charming, and I’m surprised I’d not encountered them before.

That’s why it’s so important to keep up with 60-year old news!