[ 50 Years of The Italian Job ]
90 June 2019 MiniWorld
a student could own one.” Michael Caine
recalls: “It was a good car to do all these
stunts with. It worked for us and they
were small and they were inexpensive.
We were going to have to smash a lot
of them. So it worked on every level.”
Kennedy Martin knew the Mini well.
“I had one, and everyone I knew had
one. I had the cheapest one, which cost
about 400 or 500 quid. I drove it down
to Italy and I was in the Mini when I
went around Turin looking at locations.
The other thing about the Mini was it
was front-wheel drive. So, if you are
going to move them into a coach at
speed you needed [front-wheel drive].
It was the natural vehicle of choice.”
French stunt-driver, Rémy Julienne,
who designed the sequence on screen,
approved: “It was the perfect car for the
fi lm. First of all, it was a British make and
it was English men who were heroes
of the plot. Normally we have a lot of
modifi cations we need to do but those
cars were rally cars and they were very
well adapted to what we needed them
to do.” Kennedy Martin recalls Julienne
was able to take his imagination to
the next level: “The chase was broadly
there – all the major elements as to how
they were going to get out of the city.
Julienne’s contribution to this fi lm was
absolutely important. He and his drivers
were able to do things with those Minis
that I certainly hadn’t contemplated.
He took on board what suggestions
there were in the script and embellished
them in every possible way to make
the escape one of the greatest car-
chases we have ever seen in movies.”
A city in chaos! Minis race through
the gallerias and piazzas of Turin.The Producer,
Michael Deeley.“...they were small and they
were inexpensive.”