Riley Elf (BMC)

At the start of the Mini's development, the Suez crisis played a role. Oil and fuel became scarce and expensive, and bubble cars and mobility scooters dominated the street scene. Car manufacturers suffered from sharply reduced sales. The British Motor Corporation (BMC) and all the brands that belonged to it - Austin, Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley - were also suffering.

Shortly after the Cooper appeared, BMC also came out with the Riley Elf and the Wolseley Hornet. The Mini Cooper was sporty, while the Riley and Wolseley were more luxury-oriented. Riley was traditionally a sporty, upmarket car brand and it lacked a small model in the harsh early 1960s. And Wolseley, as a manufacturer of luxury models, also needed a small in this period.

So it worked out that almost all BMC brands wanted their own version of the Mini, also because they were all still represented by separate dealer organisations. So the Mini was already there as an Austin Seven and Morris Mini Minor, but a model for Riley and Wolseley needed to be more distinctive.

On 12 October 1961, BMC launched the Riley Elf and the Wolseley Hornet. They were Minis with some of the sportier Cooper technology and a real butt with separate boot lid - an almost conventional model, in other words. Both were embellished with vertical rear light units, a vertical grille with side grills and lots of chrome trim. The Wolseley even had an illuminated logo in the grille. The interior was more luxuriously appointed, with a real wooden dashboard and interior panels, and more luxurious fabrics. That they were equipped with Mini Cooper technology was no luxury, because the little sedans were a bit heavier than the spartan Mini as intended.