MORRIS NOSTALGIA

The Morris Minor was a beacon of stability as Britain transformed from smog, demob suits and Brylcreem to bell-bottomed trousers and deeply unfortunate male hairstyles

One of the many fascinating challenges of writing about how the Morris Minor was originally marketed is that its production run took place during a period of seismic social change in the United Kingdom. It debuted in 1948, a time when less than eight per cent of all households had a refrigerator, when there were fewer than 15,000 television sets and when private car ownership was a pipe dream for countless Britons. When the last Travellers left the factory in April 1971, they were priced in the recently introduced decimal money, The Beatles had broken up 12 months earlier and T. Rex was topping the Hit Parade with Hot Love. Their lead singer, Marc Bolan, was only a year old when the Minor was introduced… These eight advertisements illustrate the first 17 years of the Minor’s lifespan and one constant theme is that it is a small car that offers all the quality inherent in the Morris name. The publicity often reassured a prospective buyer that a limited budget is never an impediment to enjoying the highest motoring standards – as your friendly dealer would be pleased to demonstrate. A second is that of fuel economy and a third is how a Minor offered ‘ big car’ motoring in a very affordable package. Finally, by the end of the Fifties the Minor was its own advertisement for it was not merely ubiquitous but was now as much a part of the fabric of British life as Hancock’s Half Hour or the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day. Automotive fashions came and went but the Morris seemed timeless and it also changed the way that hundreds of thousands of drivers viewed massmotoring. A low cost did not have to mean low standards of handling, roadholding or of sheer enjoyment, be it a saloon, tourer, van or pick-up. Here’s to the next 70 years.