JustBritish

History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce … then as the Mini. An announcement that two new versions of Britain’s most successful car will soon be produced at BMW’s Cowley plant offers coruscating insights into national identity, consumer psychology and the realities of design today.

It was on August 26, 1959, when ice-cream colored Ford Zodiacs with fluted chrome still wafted along dual-carriageways, that the Mini 1.0 appeared. As a small boy my father took me to see one of the first at the Rocket Garage in Liverpool.

What was obvious even — perhaps specially — to a child was ingenuity of a high order. Alec Issigonis’s insistence on compactness and his refusal of “style” produced the most unusual and influential car ever. But Issigonis had a demanding personality: he insisted, for example, that discomfort kept drivers helpfully alert.
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The Telegraph reports that the report into the demise of MG Rover will highlight “questionable” business practices by the Phoenix Four but contains no “smoking gun” on the conduct of the Government.

The report will be published this Friday after the Serious Fraud Office decided not to pursue a fraud investigation into the demise of the Midlands car maker in 2005.

According to sources who have seen the document, it makes uncomfortable reading for the Government – especially over what happened to a £100m bridging loan designed to rescue MG Rover – but suggests that Labour did try to save the car maker and there was no deliberate plan to pull the plug on the business.

The report, which has cost the taxpayer £16m and has taken four years to compile, contains numerous details of complex financial transactions.

However, the SFO has deemed there is no evidence of fraud after analysing the 850 pages and two volumes which make up the report.

Nonetheless, Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, is believed to be consulting lawyers about potentially barring the Phoenix Four – John Towers, Nick Stephenson, Peter Beale and John Edwards – who bought MG Rover in 2000, from being company directors.

“I think what people will be asking themselves in the light of this report is whether they, as individuals, are fit to conduct themselves as directors of companies in the future,” Lord Mandelson said.