Brief History
A Brief History of the Morris Minor.
Under the careful eye of Vice-President Sir Miles Thomas and Chief Engineer Mr A J Oaks, Alex Issigonis’s ideas were carefully nurtured. After a night Fire Watching young Issigonis put forwarded fundamentally new ideas on car construction. These ideas made an impact and influenced both Thomas and Oaks to give Issigonis a free hand on designing what was to be Morris’s new small four seater car.
The first and early days of development was given to this new car the Morris Mosquito. By 1943 the first full prototype was built along with a set of 14inch wheels. As issigonis pointed out that these were made by Dunlop as there was none that existed at that time. In 1944 the first road test were carried out to North Wales and back with issigonis at the wheel of the Mosquito. It was powered by a Morris 8 series engine. Upon his return he wrote a report, in it he reported how much embarrassing attention the car made particularly when driving through towns. In 1947 it was decided that a Morris version of the Mosquito would be announced at the 1948 Motor Show.
In what is a well documented episode in the development of the Mosquito. Issigonis changed the width of the car by cutting it length ways and adding another 4 inches to it. In 1947 after a few more changes Lord Nuffield made one more and final change and that was to change the name from Morris Mosquito to The Morris Minor.
And so it was that a two door and a tourer were prepared for the exhibition at the London Motor Show in 1948 as examples of the New Morris Minor.
The scene was set for the public to give its verdict on a revolutionary design which had taken six years to get into production.
There have been many changes to the Morris Minor since those days.
In Jan. 1961 a total of 350 Morris Minors were made as a celebrations of its 1,000,000 car in production these cars were painted a lilac colour with white interior and a special 1,000,000 badging.
Between 1947 and 1971 a total of 1,619,857 Morris Minors were made.