35 replies to this topic

[Burnard]

The S defiantly doesn't stand for anything, my dad also asked this question when he met john cooper once, the reason is exactly as dan has said in his posts.

[huntface]

So really, it comes down to who's point of view you want to believe either John Cooper or BMC. Clearly they believed it either meant nothing or Special.

[Shifty]

I may get splinters on my bum from sitting on the fence here but everybody could be right.....

Initiatlly JC may have just given it the letter 'S' to make it different from the standard cooper...

However...


Later on in life BMC/others decided that it should / does stand for something hence the 'Sports' or 'Special' connections.

The name could just have simply been made to fit the circumstances.

[pdaykin]

I'm pretty convinced that the "S" never really stood for anything - although I'm sure that Special, Sport, Sprint, etc were all probably tabled at various meetings.

IIRC, John Cooper said that it sounded very "promenade Percy" if it was anything other than simply "S"

[Miki Leyland]

I read somewhere that the S stood for "short", referring to the stroke of these new engines as opposite to the previous Coopers which started using the crankshaft of normal Minis and needed much larger stroke to bore ratio. This allowed the S's to rev much faster. Could it be?

[beardylondon]

Holy thread revival!