There have been plenty of movies made about heists, and most of them have involved fantastic cars with fabulous car chases. But what made The Italian Job (both of them) stand out and apart from the other movies was the use of very surprising cars in the movie, the Mini Cooper that belongs to the BMW family. We agree, the Mini Cooper certainly has a long and interesting history, but as a getaway vehicle, it lacked a certain flair. That was until these movies came along and gave the famous Mini Cooper another push.
The first movie came out way back in 1969 and was more of a comic-caper than an action heist movie, and its iconic Mini Cooper chase scene where the protagonists escape the authorities by driving the Minis into sewer tunnels became a much-parodied scene that later even The Simpsons copied.
The first movie still had enough cool factor to get remade, this time into a more action-oriented film, with the chase sequence still featuring the Mini Coopers. Although this time we had Mark Wahlberg and the very delectable Charlize Theron drive these Minis in a superbly-directed car chase sequence.
Updated April 2022: This article has been updated to find out where the cars are today. So, let’s get into the Mini Coopers of The Italian Job and where they are now, considering they were one of the most important cast members of both versions of the film.
The 1969 Mini Coopers From The Original Movie
In the 1969 version of The Italian Job, 16 Mini Coopers were used in total. At the time, they were all the pre-1968 Mk I models, although their license plates said otherwise. The movie’s car stunts were more fantasy than reality, showing the Minis driving into sewers, leaping off rooftops, and even driving on railway tracks.
The car chase was more imaginative than real and far more amusing than it was thrilling, reason enough why it was later parodied in many shows over the years.
That said; none of the 16 Mini Coopers of the show survived, and all were destroyed during filming. But this is not the end of them.
After bidding a cool £6,000 for bits and pieces of the cars in 2005 that fit into a mere box, 42-year-old Newcastle resident David Morton restored three cars to their exact film look and displayed them at the MiniFest in Staffordshire in 2011.
The film’s star Michael Caine and Chief Stunt Driver Remy Julienne helped Morton get the cars to their original state. They're each insured for £55,000 now and are now known as the official Italian Job Minis.
The Mini Coopers In The Italian Job 2003
In 2003, The Italian Job was remade and released as a far more action-oriented film, considering it had Jason Statham and Mark Wahlberg in it.
Call it good or bad, the BO results came in astoundingly in the movie’s favor, making it a hit in terms of money and audience recall. Of course, not everyone may have liked it, as film critic Joe Morgenstern called the second of the two movies "the best car commercial ever." And many agreed, the movie did put the Mini Cooper in a very good light.
For the movie, most of the stunt driving was done by the actors themselves, be it Mark Wahlberg, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, or even the others. All the actors had to undergo specialized stunt driving training, and all of them called it quite an experience.
While Wahlberg later describes as driving the Mini Cooper like driving an intensely-powered Go Kart, he did fess up to throwing up inside the car after the first 10 minutes of wild driving, during the training period.
Such was the intense training that Theron later said that she got two speeding tickets while driving her own car during the production, unable to keep herself from exceeding the 40 miles per hour speed limit around town.
All actors also admitted that Charlize Theron was the best driver of them all. But perhaps the uncredited star of the movie remained the Mini Cooper, because, after the release of the movie, there was a spurt in sales of the MINI in the US, up by 20%.
Where Are The Mini Coopers Of The Italian Job?
In the 2003 movie, the audience saw only three Minis, a red, a white, and a blue one. But in truth, 32 Mini Coopers were used for production, one of them bearing two steering wheels. The actor performed on the dummy wheel while a stunt driver, unseen to the camera, was the one to actually drive the car. This particular dual-steering Mini is now part of the Mini factory tour in Cowley, Oxford.
In fact, since gasoline-powered vehicles were not allowed to be driven inside LA’s all-electric subway for safety reasons, production had to build two electric Mini Coopers and one Mini Cooper S to shoot the subway sequence.
One of the classic Mini Coopers shown in this film, not part of the chase sequence but driven by Charlize Theron in the beginning was in actuality a 1963 Austin Mini Coupe, as a nod to the original movie. This car was part of an auction in 2009, by Mecum Auctions.
As far as the rest of the cars are concerned, both Paramount Pictures and BMW have kept a tight lid over the fate of how many were destroyed, how many survived, and where the survivors are today. For now, it's just a Mini mystery!
Sources: TheDailyMail, CNN, Mecum