MY Morris Minor 1000

modern curved one-piece unit and the rear window was enlarged to increase visibility. In 1961 the semaphore style trafficators were replaced by flashing directional indicators

In 1961 the Morris Minor became the first British car to sell more than a million and this was celebrated with a limited run of 350 two-door saloons in distinctive lilac paintwork and a white interior. The badge was modified to read Minor 1000000 instead of Minor 1000. A final update took place in 1962 giving the car a 1098cc engine along with other minor changes. History in Depth
The First Morris Minor
The Morris Minor we all know and love was not the first car to bear the name. The first Morris Minor was launched on the first of September 1928. It was designed to compete directly with the Austin Seven. The little fabric bodied car was innovative in the fact it had an 847cc overhead camshaft engine. This sporty little engine eventually gave rise to the first MG Midget. By 1931 a new Minor was in production which featured a side valve engine instead of the ohc version and a new lower price tag of £100. Sadly this Minor was only in production until 1934 during which the depression hit and Morris saw it’s market share fall from 51 percent down to just 27 percent. The Minor was replaced by successive versions of the Morris 8. The Minor name lay dormant until after the Second World War. Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis

Alec Issigonis will be remembered as one of the most innovative car designers of all time. He was born in 1906 in Smyrna, Turkey. His father a naturalised British subject of Greek decent, ran a marine engineering business and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Bavarian brewer. The Issigonis family fled to England in 1922 to escape the Turkish invasion of Smyrna. Sadly Alec’s father died, en route, in Malta. It was Alec’s mother’s intention for him to go to art school but he decided to take a three-year engineering course at Battersea Polytechnic. He was offered a job with the Rootes group at the Humber drawing office at Coventry. Here he worked on the Evenkeel independent suspension design. After two years he met Robert Boyle, chief engineer at Morris, who offered him a job at Cowley, where he developed an independent suspension system for the series M10 which, incidentally, was to be Morris’ first monocoque constructed car. The M10 saw production in 1938 but without Issigonis’ new suspension or the rack and pinion steering system he had also designed. These concepts were also due to be used in a new small MG saloon which was to enter production in 1940 but the outbreak of war in September 1939 meant that the car was not produced until 1947. With the outbreak of world war II, Issigonis was set to work designing a variety of military vehicles, including an amphibious tank! In the early 1940s Miles Thomas, the Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of The Nuffield Organisation, expressed an interest in developing a new small car to go into production after the war. This task was given to Issigonis. It was well known that Issigonis had a strong belief that a car should offer as much payload as possible in the minimum of space (a concept he successfully took to the extreme with the 1959 Mini). Alec Issigonis was taken out of the drawing office at the Cowley works and given his own development shop. He was allocated two draughtsmen to turn his ideas into drawings. Reg Job drew up the body designs and Jack Daniels, the running gear. Issigonis was famed for producing quick sketches of his designs on anything that came to hand. It was left to Job and Daniels to translate these ideas into workable drawings. By 1942 Issigonis had produced a scale model of the new car and from this had drawings made. From these drawings a hand made prototype was created. By December of 1943 the completed prototype, known as the Mosquito, was ready for the road. The Mosquito had distinct American styling, looking very much like a scaled down version of a 1941 Packard Clipper. When Lord Nuffield saw the Mosquito prototype he was said to be furious, likening it to a poached egg. Lord Nuffield was a traditionalist and expected all Morris cars to have an upright grille and separate running boards. He had quite a dislike for Issigonis, refusing to call him by his name and only referring to him as “that foreign chap”. Naturally, the car was of unitary construction and incorporated Issigonis’ Rack and pinion steering and independent suspension. Issigonis had been impressed with the torsion bar suspension of the Citroen Traction Avant and has used a similar system in the Mosquito. One advantage of the steering and suspension systems that were used on the Mosquito was that they were compact and fitted with Issigonis’ idea that space should be used for payload rather than mechanics. A compact flat four engine was also being developed. Issigonis reasoned that opposing cylinders would mean that the engine block could be effectively half as long as a traditional in line block, and that being horizontally opposed, this would mean the engine height was reduced substantially. This effectively reduced the centre of gravity of the car. Sadly, very little is known about the design of this engine. The Mosquito also broke with tradition by the use of 14-inch wheels. Most cars of the time used 16 or 17-inch wheels. Although Issigonis maintained that the reason for smaller wheels was aesthetics, smaller wheels, meant smaller wheel arches which mean less intrusion on payload space. The wheels and tyres for the car had to be specially manufactured by Dunlop. The Mosquito was ready for the road but, due to the ongoing war, there was still no domestic car production. Issigonis spent the intervening years refining and perfecting the prototype. In 1946, with the war ended, Morris’ main priority was getting back into production by reviving its pre-war Series E 8hp and Series M 10hp models. As the pre-war cars were selling well there was no urgency to get the new models into production. Of course the car did go into production but not without a few changes. One being the engine. Several factors led to the flat four engine being dropped, problems with vibration in the new unit still hadn’t been solved and the British system of taxation meant it was more cost effective to use the 918cc traditional 4 cylinder side valve engine from the Morris Series E 8hp. This was successfully fitted into a prototype with a little modification to the steering system. Lord Nuffield also objected to the name Mosquito and this was dropped in favour of resurrecting the Minor name. Issigonis wasn’t entirely happy with the Minor’s appearance. The Minor was only 57 inches wide and he thought it looked too tall and too narrow. He therefore had one of the prototypes cut down the middle and the two halves moved apart until it looked pleasing to the eye. It was the left to Reg Job to redraw the body to incorporate the extra 4 inches to the width. On the final car, the only place this could be seen was on the bonnet, which had a raised section down the centre. Some parts had already gone into production, including the bumper bars and valance. These were cut in half and metal strips inserted to make up the extra 4 inches in width. These fillet plates can clearly be seen on early Minors. This also meant an increase in track which could only improve the car’s already exceptional road holding. It also meant extra space for passengers and luggage. By 1948 a total of eight prototypes had been produced, and from inception to production the basic shape had changed very little. Production of the body shells started at Nuffield Metal products in Birmingham in July 1948 and the first car rolled off the production line on September 20th 1948. Two body styles were produced, a two door saloon and a tourer. An example of each was prepared for the forthcoming British Motor Show at Earls Court. Due to the war, it was to be the first Motor Show to be held for ten years. The Minor was launched alongside two other new stable mates, the 1.5 litre Morris Oxford, Series MO, and the 2.2 litre Morris Six, Series MS, as well as the upmarket Wol