Breakfast Bytes Blogs

Today is the last day before a break so I'm going off topic as usual. Tomorrow is a Cadence Global Recharge Day (all of Cadence is shut down) and Monday is Juneteenth (a U.S. federal holiday as of last year). If you watch the Sunday Brunch videos I make regularly (well, irregularly since some weeks I don't get around to it) you will know I have a Mini Cooper S convertible. Here's the most recent video I made in it.

The modern Mini is actually a remake of the Mini originally produced in 1959. It is still built in England but the company is now owned by BMW. If you think that the current Mini is small, then you should see it compared to its sixties equivalent.

History of the Mini

The Mini was the second major design by legendary automotive designer Alec Issigonis, the first being the 1948 Morris Minor. The Mini started production in 1959 and finished in 1967. By the way, the Morris Minor outlasted it, with production not ending until 1972, making it one of the longest-lived production runs at 23 years.

It was very small, so small that the engine would not fit along the axis of the vehicle that was normally done. Instead, the combined engine and transmission was mounted across the vehicle, with the differential underneath the transmission so it could power the front wheel driveshafts directly. Costs were shaved to the bone. There were no wind-down windows, just sliding windows. The "handle" to open the doors was actually a cord stretched from the front to the back of the door that opened the latch. 

My Parents' Mini

As it happened, my parents bought a Mini. In that era, my mother, me, and my brother lived in Bath (near Bristol). My father was there at weekends but his job was in Hatfield, in the North East of London. One Friday he came back from London with a new Mini. My Mum thought that this was significant enough to get me and my brother up from our beds at 10pm or so to come and see it. It was white. I still remember the license plate. Later my father would also buy what today is called an RV so he could live near his work during the week. It turned out that one of his neighbors (yes, there were other people doing the same) worked for an oil company and got them to drill a well so they all had water.

My CFO's Mini

It turned out that when I went to France, my finance person, Marie,  also had a mini (in Paris). One of the original ones since the new Mini was not yet in production. Eventually, she got a company car (I never did!) but she had a story of her Mini failing to start in Paris when she was with Larry Carner, the CFO of VLSI but unknown to anyone at the time, the future CFO of Cisco during its big growth period, so now a zillionaire. But her then boss, pushed her Mini to get it started.

When I became CEO of Compass Design Automation, I brought her over from France to be my CFO. But I forget what she was driving at that point. Unfortunately, she passed a few years ago, at an early age.

My Mini

My car got written off in an accident so I had to decide what to buy. I used to own a Mazda Miata years ago, the most fun car I owned. But it seemed boring to buy another one so I thought about a Mini and went to the dealership. It turned out they had a vehicle that had been leased but returned, so it was technically second-hand, so cheap, but only had 500 miles on it, so basically new. That is the car in the video above that I have now owned for over six years.

It is the only car after my Miata that I can say I love driving. Interesting fact, see those metal loops in the picture below. They have "airbag" deployment. In the event of a crash, they explode upwards so that even if the vehicle rolls over you are protected. I can confirm this since in the accident I had the body shop didn't even notice and didn't reset them. I only noticed when the roof refused to open.

My Wife's Mini

My wife is originally from China, where she drove motorbikes but never a car. Her first priority when she came to California was to get a driving license and a car. She loved my Mini so much that when we went to the nearby Carmax, she found a Mini Countryman that she loved (four doors, much bigger than mine; also four-wheel drive). So now we are a two-Mini family.

The Mini Cooper SE

Somehow YouTube knows I own a Mini and thinks I should watch movies about Minis. Especially the Mini Cooper SE, which is electric. It seems that electric cars are splitting into two groups, ones like Tesla that can go a long way, and "city cars" like the Mini that have 120 miles or so. Perfect if you have another car or are prepared to rent a car if you want to go on a trip like I just did at about 1,000 miles in a week. Here's a video of some people trying to do a road trip in a Mini Cooper SE anyway:

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