UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Fast-forward to 2022 and with all domestic legal restrictions relating to Covid having ended last month, the club was keen for the car to finally have the public unveiling that it always deserved. The MMOC scooped the award for Outstanding Lockdown Restoration during last year’s National Car Club Awards for its work on FMT 265J so it made sense for it to appear at the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show.
But before that, Tom wanted to address all of the jobs that he hadn’t had chance to do prior to the car entering Cowley’s factory museum.
‘We got it trailered to T-block. The car had done maybe a mile driving up and down the road and that was it! It had no choke, the charging system wasn’t working and it hadn’t been Mot’d. It was missing loads of other little details that just weren’t considered to be important at the time, too – it had to be there before lockdown so our sole focus was on making it look “okay”, start, stop and drive. Thankfully I’ve since been able to get everything done to complete this car’s restoration properly.’
FMT 265J returned to Tom at the beginning of February and we went to visit him earlier this month now that all the tasks on his to-do list have been checked off. Tom’s certainly been busy over the past few weeks. Inside, the Minor has been fitted with its missing parcel shelf while the metal that surrounds the glass for the quarterlights are now body-coloured, as they would have been in period. ‘The door tops were a big job because I had to remove them from a freshlypainted car – it was scary!’, says Tom.
A pair of missing ashtrays that had proven elusive in 2020 have also since been sourced and fitted. Under the bonnet, the A-series engine now enjoys working choke and the charging issue was identified as a faulty voltage regulator.
Outside, the front and rear bumpers now have the overriders that were missing during its Cowley celebrations – they’d been sent off for re-chroming but hadn’t returned prior to the second lockdown so Tom hadn’t the opportunity to fit them. The wheels have also been changed – the paint on the ones that were fitted had inexplicably flaked and cracked while it was in the factory museum.
Tom says: ‘The biggest challenge and the thing that I’m most proud of is the headlining. Normally you use the original one as a guide to make the new one fit but there wasn’t much of the original left. There’s also meant to be a front board that you use as a measurement point and I didn’t have it so it involved a lot of trial and error – in the end it took me nearly two days to complete.’
Asked to reflect on his efforts prior to both its 50th anniversary at Cowley and its public debut at the NEC Restoration Show and Tom says: ‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of working on this car. Lockdown was a very interesting period of my life. I felt like I’d lost a lot, because I had job security and that vanished and there were a lot of things that needed to be changed as a result. The Morris Minor Owners’ Club helped me out massively by allowing me to do this because it gave me the focus and the drive to pick myself up and do something.
‘I’m not a professional restorer, I’m an enthusiast – there will be things that will be ever so slightly wrong, but this has for the most part been a clubbased restoration. To say that I helped re-assemble the last Morris Minor saloon is something that I’ll take to my grave. I’m really proud of it, it’s stunning. It’s a very pretty little car.’
It certainly is, Tom!