Really Scary Engineering

[Dr. Ian McArthur]

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Back in the sixties John Cooper (builder of the famous Mini Cooper S cars)
built a "Twinny."  This was a twin engined Mini Cooper with two standard
4-speed transmissions.  The shift mechanisms were coupled together.  It
actually had two gear levers but the driver only had to shift on of them
since they were mechanically linked.

As I recall, John Cooper himself was driving the car on a British motorway
at a somewhat scary speed when the shift linkage did not quite make a
correct shift and the back wheels locked up solid.  John was nearly killed
and that was the end of the Twinny.

In 1972 we started work on our own Mini Cooper S twinny as a show car.  We
were putting another engine / transmission in the back of the car, facing
backwards.  This way, with two drivers facing in opposite directions, we
could drive it either forwards or backwards.  All of our autoslalom cars had
dark perspex glazing so spectators could not see inside.

We thought it would be just a hoot to line up for a slalom with the car
facing the wrong way and do the course in reverse.  Also thought it would be
super in parades, where we could crank over both sets of wheels and dog walk
down the street at a fairly substantial angle

Since we won the autoslalom championship three years in a row in our orange
Mini Coopers and were quite famous for outlandish technical ideas, we felt
this car would have great potential as a promotional vehicle.

Alas, winter came and the car was never finished...
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Dr. Ian McArthur, Consulting by Acronym, Cochrane, Alberta
ian at sutul.org
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