The Amsterdam Job: the story of an epic classic Mini advert

| 28 Apr 2023

If you’ve ever been to Amsterdam’s historic inner city – stag night or hen do, anyone? – you’ll know it’s a small miracle that cars are still allowed on the cobbled canal streets and narrow bridges.

So who on earth came up with the ridiculous concept of shooting an ambitious television advert here?

One in which a rock band lands in a helicopter, jumps into a red Mini to leap rather than drive across these constricted streets, being chased by fans on bicycles, only to end on a barge for an open-air concert (search ‘Mini Advert – Oppo’ on YouTube to see the whole thing).

Lift-off for the stunt Mini Cooper as it takes to the air in Amsterdam

Although the idea for a Mini commercial featuring a band came from British Leyland itself, it was director Dennis Abey who planned to move the location to central Amsterdam.

He had just made his first comedy film when BL approached him. Dennis, now 90, remembers it well: “Originally, they wanted to shoot it at the Royal Albert Hall, but I didn’t like that plan and suggested we go to Amsterdam instead.

“In those days they were wide open to any idea so I wasn’t surprised when they said yes.”

An accidental diversion over Amsterdam prison landed the helicopter crew in some trouble

What he needed next was a band. Enter HEPE – a group of London schoolboys in their late teens and early 20s, who played regularly at local schools and clubs.

“We were a bunch of bored, latently talented music-obsessives, determined to escape the boundaries of our bedrooms to pursue fame,” recalls founding member Jeff Boult.

“But we were also partly chosen because we’d appeared as a band in a previous TV commercial for Abbey National.”

Oppo’s open-air concert on one of the city’s canals was a hit with the local ‘fans’

In addition to guitarist Jeff, the group comprised Fred Gardner (guitar and vocals), Geoff Trickey (bass), James Bradley (drums), Dennis Miles (vocals), plus Gerry Nedwell and Peter Almond (both keyboards).

But BL needed only four band members for the film. Jeff sailed through the selection committee, but recalls that not all of the band members were so lucky: “Unfortunately, Fred was considered to be too unphotogenic to be part of the line-up for the advertisement.

“The two of us did write the music for it, though, as a part of the deal.”

The whereabouts of the original Oppo Minis are unknown, but this 1975 twin is a perfect substitute

BL had further stipulations, too. It didn’t like the name HEPE and insisted on changing that to something that had a ‘more international’ appeal.

And so HEPE became Oppo, the name no doubt inspired by the palindromic number-one hit-machine of the mid-1970s, ABBA.

By the spring of 1975, the Mini song had been written by Fred and Jeff, and studio-recorded, and the band was all ready to fly over to Amsterdam for the filming.

A Cooper was disguised as a standard Mini 1000 for the shoot, with the stunt driver and three mannequins on board

It had a profound impact on Jeff: “It was a really powerful experience. I was 19 at the time, and I had never been on a jet plane before, let alone in a helicopter pulling tight manoeuvres over central Amsterdam!”

That was also where the crew had its first encounter with the long arm of Dutch law, as director Dennis remembers: “Apparently we flew over Amsterdam prison, which got us into trouble with the local police.

“But they seemed to like us English and they were ever so friendly. If you go down a one-way street in London, no matter what, you’ll be given a ticket. The policing in Amsterdam wasn’t quite so strict.

“I remember they stopped us when we did just that. They just said: ‘You were very silly doing this – you had better go back!’ It was all like that.”

Stunt driver Stephen Wilms-Harvey successfully avoided Amsterdam’s 17th-century canal houses

But that easy-going police approach soon became a major worry to the film crew.

Although Jeff believes that the centre of the city was closed down for filming, Dennis remembers it very differently: “We asked the police if they thought it necessary to close the roads, but they wouldn’t do it.

“‘What happens if we kill somebody?’ I asked them next. ‘Then you’ll go to prison,’ they replied. Well, that scared me!

“Throughout the shooting, there were several moments when I was seriously nervous and I wasn’t on my own. We could have killed somebody, there is no doubt about that. But we were young so we just got on with it.”

Al fresco dining was a brave choice, as the little Mini terrorised Amsterdam’s side streets

The man who actually carried out the jumps over the canal bridges was Stephen Wilms-Harvey.

Just 26 years old at the time, young Stephen was contracted to BL as a racing driver and was sent over to the Dutch capital to carry out the stunts.

“He was a precision driver who came over from British Leyland,” confirms Dennis. “He was an utterly, utterly English guy, but was ever so mad.

“I remember he drove straight through the front doors of our hotel at the Prinsengracht, just to ask for the keys!”

Bags of cement in the Mini’s boot stopped it from nose-diving after a jump

The Mini that can be seen in the video being driven by the band was a standard Mini 1000 that was on loan from the Dutch British Leyland concessionaire. But it wasn’t on its own.

“They supplied two Minis,” recalls Dennis.

“One was an ordinary model, which the guys from the band drove, but the other one was a souped-up version, a Mini Cooper.

“We just took off the Cooper badges and swapped the numberplates to make it look the same.”

British Leyland commissioned the outlandish film

And the Mini wasn’t the only wolf in sheep’s clothing: its occupants were in disguise, too.

Precision driver Stephen was dressed up as a stunt double for drummer James Bradley, wearing a green shirt, and was joined by a trio of mannequins in place of the other three band members in his Mini ‘sleeper’.

Bags of cement were placed in the Cooper’s boot to stop it from landing nose-first and off he went.

Dennis remembers that at one point cameraman Harvey Harrison was so nervous that he wanted to cancel the whole thing.

There’s footage of all four wheels leaving the ground 10 times in the final cut

That didn’t happen, and amazingly the filming of the stunts took place with no incidents.

In the end, 10 Mini leaps – with all four wheels off the ground – made it into the commercial, but Stephen no doubt performed many more despite the obvious risks.

The Mini is a diminutive car, but the canal streets are unusually narrow and there were obstructions everywhere: pavements, traffic signs, fences and gates, lots of bicycles and other cars – not to forget the monumental 17th-century canal houses of UNESCO World Heritage fame.

A Mini 1000 returns to the streets of the Dutch capital

Driving along these routes at anything over 20mph seems dangerous, but the Mini in the film must have needed at least double that speed to complete its jumps – especially the last one over the broad Keizersgracht canal.

Jeff remembers a Mini being wrecked during one of the bridge attempts, cracking the sump, but Dennis recalls no such incidents and describes that week’s filming in Amsterdam in spring 1975 as: “One very funny shoot.”

“One of the crew brought his younger brother over and he was sent out to do some panning shots,” he continues. “He ended up in the red-light district and couldn’t keep his camera off it – so we never used his material.”

The advertisement never aired in the UK

“But that unlikely freedom was what was so lovely about it,” explains Dennis. “Nobody knew anything about this film when we started. We just did it.”

Dennis also recalls that all of the crew was English except for the ‘fans’, about 70 of them dressed in Oppo and Mini T-shirts, who were Dutch: “The whole team was there for about a week, although the actual shooting with the Mini took place in two or three days.

“There was a representative from British Leyland who came over for a day, but he just liked anything that we did. Nobody was looking over your shoulder. You could do whatever you liked.”

A de-badged Mini Cooper replaced a standard Mini 1000 in the action shots

Once it had been edited, the commercial was broadcast throughout Europe, but curiously not in the UK.

“It’s been shown all around the world but not in England,” says a bemused Dennis, “I have no idea why.”

That may explain why the specially composed song never took off in its home country, where HEPE had officially become Oppo, hoping the advert would deliver a breakthrough.

“Our publisher seized the opportunity of the worldwide ad campaign and asked us to write a full-length version of the song,” says Jeff.

The song for the advert, Miracles (A Mini Epic), was written by band members Fred Gardner and Jeff Boult

“We did that and released it as Miracles (A Mini Epic) yet had little success,” he continues.

“But then the song was picked up by a Swedish artist named Anita Garbo. Her version was produced by Jeff Lynne of ELO and named Miracles.

“It became a hit in the Benelux countries. It made the top 20 in The Netherlands, and reached number nine in Belgium in 1977.”

Some daring camera angles were employed

While Oppo didn’t last long, Fred and Jeff carried on in the music business, eventually arranging and producing music for movies and adverts themselves.

Dennis Abey’s production company made many more commercials before he turned to television, mostly creating dramas.

The Mini adventure in Amsterdam was the start of an impressive career for the two cameramen involved, Harvey Harrison and Eric van Haren Noman, both of whom went on to shoot a number of major motion pictures in Hollywood, James Bond included.

A cruise down an Amsterdam canal is the perfect ending to the mad Mini advert

Last but not least there was stunt driver Stephen Wilms-Harvey, the ‘utterly English madman’ who drove the Mini through his hotel doors just for the fun of it.

His subsequent career is harder to trace, but he turns out to have become a preacher in a suburb of Sydney, Australia.

He is quoted as having said: “The Bible teaches us that when we disobey or fall away from following God, things start to go wrong.”

That makes it sound unlikely that we will ever see him jumping canal bridges again, even if UNESCO would allow it…

Words & images: Jeroen Booij

Little star is born on the big screen

When considering the Mini’s vast big- and small-screen career, Mr Bean and The Italian Job go virtually without saying.

Almost as well known are the New Zealand-built 1000s in Goodbye Pork Pie and the Radford Mini de Ville from A Shot in the Dark, which director Blake Edwards subsequently acquired.

And, across the Atlantic, an Austin Cooper appeared in the Paul Newman racing drama Winning.

However, the Mini’s celluloid breakthrough arguably occurred with two pictures released in 1962.

The CID drove an Austin Se7en rather than the more familiar Wolseleys in the agreeable B-film Seven Keys, while the comic The Fast Lady features a Morris Cooper.

Stunt driver Jack Silk had to don a blonde wig in the latter to double for Julie Christie.

The following year there was a Morris co-star for Juliet Mills in Nurse on Wheels, while the car piloted by Dirk Bogarde in Doctor in Distress boasted wickerwork panelling.

The Mini’s prominent appearances in such mainstream movie comedies demonstrated the BMC baby’s success, and by the end of the decade it was fulfilling various roles.

Laurence Harvey tried to flee ‘The North’ for Swinging London by Mini Traveller in Life at the Top, while James Booth’s detective inspector favours an unmarked Morris Cooper in Robbery.

Meanwhile, the baddies employ another example for their reconnaissance duties.

At the opposite end of the cinematic quality spectrum, a Minivan is one of the few redeeming elements of Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

Instead, it is safer to remember two prominent television roles for the Mini during the ’60s.

Many viewers associated a red Austin with Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) almost as much as their Vauxhall Victor FD, and who could forget the Radford de Ville of Adam Adamant Lives?

Even if it never explained how the revived Edwardian hero learned to drive…

Words: Andrew Roberts

Images: StudioCanal/ITV Studios

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