The car that can park on a postage stamp

Time for some goold old ingenuinety. This is MoBi-One, an 1100cc engined Mini based autotest vehicle created by Maurice (Morris) Bishop in 1968 that came with four wheel steering, seen here being demonstrated by Bishop: ‘It has a ten foot turning circle and can virtually park on a postage stamp’. The car has gone missing since quite some years now, with Morris Bishop looking for it for quite some time now.

Morris wrote: “Analyzing what would make a winning car I dreamed up a four wheel steering vehicle that would have an inside turning radius of approximately 4 foot. I decided to base the build on BMC 1100 mechanicals and bought a burnt out wreck. Some 6 weeks later it was ready for testing. The first few events were mainly to discover how to drive the beast. It quickly became clear that I was suffering from a lack of power, so I wrote Alec Issigonis at Longbridge Birmingham to see if he had a spare Cooper ‘S’ engine laying around. And to my surprise and delight he organized one to be sent to me via their development facility Downton Works! Two weeks later I competed and won – and never looked back I achieved a back-to-back win of the championship 1969 & 1970.” I’m sure he’d still love to find out more about the car’s current whereabouts.

(Words Jeroen Booij, video courtesy British Pathe)

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