Re: Military-industrial 101
Mini wasn't the first unibody car, by a long way..
Honours for developing the unibody are split between Lancia of Italy and US automotive contractor Budd (who provided designs to first Citroen for the Traction Avant, and then Chrysler for its Air-Flow). Lancia used the techniques first, but as their application was an open-cockpit racing car ("torpedo"), there was never an opportunity to create a fully closed cell.
Mini also wasn't the first transverse, front-engine, front-drive car, as this configuration dates from the late 1940s, with DKW and SAAB both using this layout. Issigonis's design was revolutionary for combining many modern design ideas into a single, affordable and usable car. Unfortunately, some of these didn't really work out, and later Mini models moved away from them (going back to steel-spring suspension, for instance). The honour of "creator of the modern front-drive car" probably has to be shared with Dante Giacosa at FIAT, who developed the Autobianchi Primula, then the FIAT 127 and 128, which between them set down the architectural pattern for nearly every FWD car that followed afterwards. But these designs built on what Issigonis had done with the Mini (as well as his earlier work on the FIAT 500 of 1957)