Morris Minor Million
When BMC set out to celebrate the 1,000,000th Morris Minor, the car had to be something special. When father and son Bill and Richard McKellar set out to restore theirs, they felt the same way.
The first British car to sell a million – celebrating it both then and now.
It is often reported that when Lord Nuffield first saw a prototype of Issigonis’ Morris Minor, he described it disparagingly as looking like a poached egg. Yet despite his comments, it would go on to be the first British car to reach the magical production figure of one million. In all, around 1.6 million Morris Minors would be made by the time it was discontinued in 1971.
Revealed at the 1948 London Motor Show, the Minor established Alec Issigonis as one of the great car designers of all time. It was the right car at the right time for Morris, coming out of war production at a time when 'export or die' was the catch- cry of the government to rebuild the British economy. In all, around 50% of Minors were exported, with the peak of 80% being reached as early as 1950.
By the end of 1960, the Minor was on the verge of hitting the one million mark. While this is not uncommon these days, in 1960 it was a rarity and Morris was justifiably proud of its achievement with the Minor. The Morris top brass decided that in order to celebrate, a special limited edition model would be released, which would become known as the Minor Million. Mechanically, the cars were to be identical to the standard production Minor 1000 model, and the differences would be entirely cosmetic.
The first decision was the colour. Although the original preference had been for gold or silver, limitations of the day meant that the paint technicians could not guarantee the results for more than six months. Publicity Department chief Jack Field had a number of Minors painted in a variety of colours, including bright orange, yellow, lime green, pink and lilac. A group of BMC managers was invited to look at the cars and decide on a colour. Apparently, the only thing they could all agree on was that orange was out of the question, and the decision was left up to Field, who chose the lilac.
The interior was white, with a mix of vinyl and leather and contrasting black piping, while outside received a little extra chrome in the shape of special wheel embellishers, and one- off 1 000 000 bonnet and boot badges. The boot badges were simply modified 1000 badges, but each was hand-made by young engineering apprentice
Keith Philpot, who had only been with the company for about a month at the time. This in part explains why some of them look decidedly more hand-made than others.
Toward the end of 1960, a Minor was taken off the production line – chassis number 881386 – and made up as a prototype Minor Million. A total of 350 Minor Millions were made, but because the commercial vehicles, vans and pick-ups had a different numbering sequence and yet passed down the production line with the saloons, there was no guarantee that the 350 Millions would have sequential chassis numbers.
It should also be noted that Minors were being assembled in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Holland,
India and Denmark using CKD packs sent out from the UK. Realistically, any of these could actually have produced the one-millionth car, and the next could have been from any other plant. The chassis numbering is an interesting point on another level, too. As was common for all Morris vehicles, the first Minor was chassis number 501, so it would seem that chassis number 1,000,000 would in reality have been the 999,500th saloon built, on top of the many thousands of commercials.
It was therefore logical to take the 350 cars for the commemorative edition from the Cowley production line to give them special sequential chassis numbers. However, it is believed the car with chassis number 1000000 was indeed the one-millionth produced,
and it came off the production line on 22nd December 1960. The other 349 cars were built between 13th and 20th December, and numbered 1000001 to 1000349, with the prototype – chassis 881386 – being renumbered 1000330.
30 of the cars were built with lefthand- drive, 20 of which went to North America, with the remaining 10 going to European agents. The one-millionth Minor was used for press purposes, then donated to the National Union of Journalists to be raffled off in support of the union’s Widow and Orphan Fund – a clever way to ensure blanket media coverage. After a rather chequered history, that car was more recently located and restored to original condition.
The other 319 RHD cars were sent to dealerships across Britain, ensuring that every dealership had at least one in stock for the official release on 4th January 1961. As part of the publicity drive, a competition was held to find the oldest surviving Morris Minor still on the road, with the winner receiving a Minor Million in return for their old clunker. Although entries were received from across the globe, the winner was Cyril Swift from Sheffield, who’s car turned out to be chassis 501 – the very first production Morris Minor. That car was eventually restored and now takes pride of place in the British Motor Museum at Gaydon in Warwickshire.
Apparently, one Minor Million, or at least a tribute car, was also built by BMC in Australia. Unlike the British cars which were all two- door models, the Aussie car was a four- door that in every other way matched the UK cars. It was given away as a prize on the 1961 TV show BP Picka-box – the show gave away numerous Minors to contestants all over Australia, but there was only ever the one lilac- coloured four- door Minor Million. Sadly, this car is believed to have survived until about 20 years ago, when it was inadvertently sold as scrap and destroyed. If true, that is a real tragedy.
If anyone has any more information about that car, or even some photos of it, we would love to hear from you.
Turning now to the car in our pictures, this is chassis number 1000086, built on 13th December 1960 and dispatched to Appleyard of Leeds on 22nd December. Registered 6936 WX, it spent most of its life in Yorkshire, before being retired in 1978. It was later advertised for sale in 1993, which is when it was bought by Australian Minor enthusiasts, father and son Bill and Richard McKellar.
'A friend of ours saw an ad for it in the UK,' Richard recalls,
'and we basically bought the car unseen. It was pretty cheap, but with the passage of time I’ve forgotten exactly how much we paid for it.' The Minor Million could not have ended up in better hands. Bill and Richard’s love of Minors goes back to Bill’s first car, a 1955 convertible that he bought when it was only a year old and on which he lavished plenty of attention. Son Richard was born in 1965, and he was told from the time he could listen that the car would be his when he turned 18.
Unfortunately, when a third child arrived in the family, the need for a bigger car and a lack of funds meant that the Morris was sold in 1969. But when Richard turned 18, he tracked the car down and bought it, eventually restoring it (with Bill’s help) back to its former glory.
As often happens, that first Minor led to more, with other restorations taking place, notably a 1959 Traveller which has won many concours trophies at National Minor Rallies across Australia in the ensuing decades. So when the Minor Million arrived from the UK at Bill and wife Claire’s property in Harcourt, near Bendigo in country Victoria, it joined a growing collection that now includes around 20 Minors of various shapes and ages, including a couple of pre-war Minor models. It was quite rough at the time, described by Richard as a bitsa – bits of this and bits of that. 'It had a front section from another Morris Minor and four different coloured wheels,' he recalls. 'It also had mechanical components swapped from other Minors, presumably to keep it going at times when money was tight.'
At least mechanically it was quite strong, and the Million was used for a few years around the property to teach Richard’s two daughters to drive. Although painted light blue, there were plenty of areas where the newer paint had worn down to reveal the original lilac underneath.
When in 2007 Bill and Richard attended the 13th Minor National Rally in Perth, Western Australia, they came home fired up to restore the Million. That restoration took about two years, with Richard and Bill doing as much of the work as physically possible themselves.
After unbolting all the major components from the car, the paint was painstakingly removed by Richard using chemical paint stripper. 'For me, stripping back to bare metal is one of the secrets of a quality restoration,' he explained. After a couple of long days, with the chemical process followed by hours of wire-brushing with wire wheels on a drill, the upper panels gleamed like new.
The car was then turned on its side, using a rollover frame Bill and Richard had bought at the local swap meet, and the underbody sealing was attacked with kerosene, diesel and petrol (not all at the same time), then wire-brushed to look as good as the upper panels. A photo of a bare-metal underside in Ray Newell’s book Original Morris Minor was Richard’s inspiration, and in his mind this was the benchmark by which he would judge his success.
With the body in bare metal, the rust situation could be fully assessed and the car was found to be in remarkably good condition. Although it had that other front panel fitted at some point, there was very little rust in the car. Richard admitted that neither he nor Bill are welders, so friend and neighbour Norm Deumer, who has restored a number of vintage cars, was called in to help with the rust repairs.
Anyone who has restored a car, or is a regular reader of this magazine, will be familiar with the sight of an old stager that has suffered the ravages of British roads in winter. Thankfully, this Morris bucked the trend and repairs were fairly, well, minor. Parts of the outer sills, lower door hinge pillars, inner wing and chassis leg sections plus the rusted bottoms of the doors were about it. Although Richard bought a number of panels for repair sections from the UK, Norm decided to cut and fold up panels from heavier gauge steel to ensure a stronger repair. Some stripped captive nuts were replaced, and a few holes that had been drilled for aftermarket accessories were filled with weld and filed flat. All up, the welding work only took about two days.
Prior to starting the restoration, Richard and Bill had decided to ensure the best parts went into the car.
' We decided we would buy as many new- old-stock parts as we could, then as many good reproduction parts as we needed,' Richard explained. 'I wouldn’t say it was a noexpense-spared restoration, but really we just wanted the best
to go into it.'
Although new chrome bumpers were available, the pair decided to have the originals restored. 'In fact, it would have been cheaper to buy new chrome. We got the original chrome re-rolled and redone in Australia, but it cost three times what we would have paid for brand new chrome off the shelf in the UK. But we have the knowledge that it is the original part, which is very nice.'
The upholstery was bought from Newton Commercial in the UK, who had done a number of Minor Millions previously, and was fitted to the restored seat frames by local trimming whiz Charles Sultana. Richard and Bill took care of the painting of the body themselves, in acrylic lacquer, which has come up a treat. 'The car would have originally been finished with cellulose paint,' Richard explained, 'but my choice was between two-pack enamel and acrylic lacquer. Advantages with the acrylic lacquer are that it is easy and safer to work with, can be applied in the open air because it dries quickly, and can be reworked and resprayed over and over until a satisfactory finish is achieved. The big disadvantage is that it requires an enormous amount of rubbing and buffing to achieve a glowing concours-like shine.'
But getting the correct colour proved a bit of a headache, according to Richard. 'It’s a paint code called RD17, which we don’t have out here. We got a guy in Melbourne to mix some paint for us from some paint codes. He showed us two samples and neither was within a bull’s roar of the original look. He said that was the best he could do, and this guy was meant to be really good. So then we went to a local guy, Dale West from Perrows Paints in Bendigo, and he matched it almost within minutes. He got the original BMC paint codes, mixed it up, then just mixed up some acrylic alongside it, put a few dots on a piece of metal and said: "There you go".'
After all the panels had been sprayed, the only major problem arose, as Richard continued. 'The disaster was the panel fit. During all the metal work it wasn’t panel fitted at any time, I just presumed it was all going to be OK. I don’t know why and I should have known better, especially after watching a guy spend eight hours panel fitting one of our earlier restos. So, we got all the parts back, I sprayed them all up and basically everything went together OK. Then when it came to the doors, they were hopelessly out. The gap between the door and the wing was probably a quarter of an inch out, and it was a different profile.
'I thought what the hell do we do? We got onto a guy named Robert Tinghe in Castlemaine, who is an unbelievably good panel-beater. He came out and literally bashed the panels into shape, which meant I had to do some more painting, but it could have been a lot worse. It was just a case of me being too excited and eager to get the paint on.'
However, all in all because of their careful and methodical routine, most things went according to plan. And, as explained in the box above, the whole experience was detailed in a book called Morris Minor. One in a Million, A Father and
Son Restoration. By his own admission Richard doesn’t like reading technical books very much himself, so he wanted this book to tell the story as much as possible through photographs and the pages are fleshed out with a minimum of text, but written with a touch of humour and typically laconic Aussie style.
So there you have it – as a restorer, collector, museum curator and author, it is fair to say that Morris Minors play a major role in Richard's life. I can't help wondering how things might have turned out if that original 1955 Tourer had stayed in the family until his 18th birthday; would his passion have been ignited in quite the same way? Probably, yes. Because as millions of other owners have discovered over the years, the Morris Minor is a car that has a way of getting under your skin.