RARE MORRIS J-TYPE VAN LUCKY FIND IN LUCKY LAKE

One of the rarest minivans ever — a 1953 Morris J-type van — is alive and well in Lucky Lake, Saskatchewan.

“I’m from Britain, and I remember these. They were used as post office vans in England. They were also used by businesses, like flower shops and that kind of thing,” explains owner Tony Hill of Lucky Lake, about 250 kilometres northwest of Regina.

“We immigrated here in 1976, and I started collecting old English cars in the early ’80s. I saw this van in Lucky Lake at a body shop. They were going to put it on a pedestal and advertise their shop,” recalls Hill.

“When I saw it, I had to have it. Then it sat in my shop for about eight years before I did anything.”

Since then, Hill has done a lot to it, and he now displays it at car shows across Saskatchewan. He has collected almost 30 old British vehicles over the years, but this is his only Morris J-type van.

This Morris van came out decades before Lee Iacocca got credit for launching the minivan segment in the mid-1980s, when he oversaw the creation of the Plymouth Voyager and Dodge Caravan. Essentially they were a boxy body with the engine and transmission from the compact K-car, known as the Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant.

Although the Voyager and Caravan popularized the concept of a small van based on a small car, it wasn’t an entirely new idea. For the 1961 model year, Ford brought out the Econoline van, based on the compact Falcon sedan, and General Motors introduced a compact van based on the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair. In 1964, Dodge brought out the compact A-100 van and Chevrolet brought out a van with many mechanicals from the compact Chevy II. Like the Econoline and the A-100, it had the engine in the front and was rear-wheel drive.

But these vans based on compact cars quickly grew, and by the 1970s and early ’80s they were based on larger trucks. Then the Chrysler minivans came out for the 1984 model year.

GM and Ford soon followed Chrysler’s lead and came out with their own minivans.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the idea of compact vans based on small cars had been around for decades. In 1949, the British automaker Morris — one of Great Britain’s biggest automakers since 1919 — introduced the Morris J-type van by using the engine from the small Morris automobile and creating a boxy body. In 1950, Volkswagen of Germany brought out its van, based largely on the Beetle.

Production of the Morris

J-type van continued until 1961, and many of these Morris vans found their way to Canada, especially after the Second World War.

“These, along with other British vehicles like Austins and Hillmans, were brought over here to help pay down the war debt. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the factories they had to export 40 per cent of whatever they built to pay down what we owed to other countries. That’s why there were a lot of them here in the 1940s and ’50s,” Hill explains.

This particular one, a 1953 model, was bought by the

Pioneer Co-op in Swift Current when it was new, and used as a grocery delivery van. In 1959, it was bought by a farmer in the area. He had an accident and the door fell off, so he parked it.

“It was left in a field for 45 years,” Hill says. “I was told that one of the owners possibly won or lost this van in a card game at one point in its life.”

Hill’s van has the original 1,489-cc flathead four-cylinder engine, from a Morris Oxford car. The three-speed standard transmission was badly rusted, but has been cleaned and restored. The transmission is unique.

“There are just two like this in the world. This has a special feature in the throttle arrangement. There are seven left-handdrive ones in the world, and two of them have a throttle arrangement like this, with the throttle in the centre, between the clutch and the brake. The other one like this is in Denmark,” Hill says.

He tracked down the man who drove this truck for the Pioneer Co-op in Swift Current in the 1950s, Phil Schlamp, and put it in a parade in Swift Current a couple of years ago.

Hill says hardly anyone knows what this van is, and that creates a lot of interest when he takes it to shows, including the Draggins Car Show in Saskatoon, and Regina’s British Cars at Irish

Bars car show.

“Usually when you take vehicles to shows, people say ‘My dad had one’ or ‘I remember these.’ But no one remembers this one. It’s very rare and unique.”

DALE EDWARD JOHNSON Tony Hill has done a lot of work to his 1953 Morris J-type van, which he discovered in a body shop in Lucky Lake years ago.

DALE EDWARD JOHNSON Hill’s van was on display at the British Cars at Irish Bars car show on Scarth Street last summer. It is seen here with a mannequin and groceries, just as it was used in the 1950s.

TONY HILL Phil Schlamp, left, and Hill, pose with the van. In 2018, Hill contacted Schlamp, who drove the van from 1957 to 1959, when it was a grocery delivery vehicle for Pioneer Co-op in Swift Current.