Morris Minor Owners Club

I thought it was styled from an American car he'd seen on an american trip the previous year...

Here's a few things I've picked up from reading stuff, like the Issigonis biogs, magazine articles, and so on.

The flat-four that Issigonis proposed for the Minor wasn't related to the Jowett unit. The Javelin's designer, Gerald Palmer, and Issigonis were just thinking alike as great minds are wont to do. According to Jonathan Wood's Issi biog. both Palmer and Issigonis were influenced by an obscure car by Steyr which had a horizontally-opposed engine mounted well to the front of the car.

The Minor unit was a sidevalve flat-four, this configuration being more compact for fitment into the original narrow-bodied Mosquito.

Although Issigonis himself thought that the engine builders at Morris Motors deliberately scuppered the flat-four it was probably the man himself who put the kibosh on it. Wasn't this the engine about which someone said its crank "looked like a piece of bent wire?" Or was that Issigonis' later Alvis V8 unit? Anyway, perhaps the Morris flat-four was better off left on the drawing board as even the Great Man said to Steady Barker many decades later, " I used to be no good at engines, but now I'm the world's best engine designer!" Issigonis must have said this in the 1970s or 1980s and if he'd designed the world's best engine he was probably alluding to the ultra-compact four and six-cylinder OHC in-line four that he'd designed for his proposed Mini replacement, the 9X, and its bigger broher, 10X.

As someone has already mentioned, I too, have seen a Moggie fitted with a front mounted Beetle engine. There was a picture of it in "Classic Cars" many moons ago. But that issue has been binned long ago, sadly, in a house move.

But the Minor flat-four did have other uses, and must have been a part of Morris' forward model plans back in the 1940s, as this website shows:

http://www.4wdonline.com/Mil/Champ/Gutty.html

The Minor-based Gutty 4x4 prototype, which later evolved into the Austin Champ, used a larger capacity variant of the Issigonis flat-four. This website says it was a 2-litre unit, another one I've seen says it was an 1800cc unit.

If Mr Skinner is hell-bent on recreating the Mosquito he could do no worse than than hanging around a Gutty-owning military vehicle museum, waiting until dark, and then liberating its engine under cover of darkness. He'd need a high-speed getaway van, though.

I once did ask if someone ever thought of plumbing in a Subaru or an Alfa flat-four into a Minor to give a taste of what Issigonis had proposed. However, I'm no engineer: I've just spent too much time reading obscure books, and magazines, and surfing the Net picking up useless information.

An aside: on the subject of the Gutty/Champ I wonder if the vehicle's torsion bar IRS was originally proposed for the Minor? It's one of the mysteries of BMC: why the company thought IRS was essential for its 4x4s (the Champ, and Gypsy) but not its RWD saloons and sportscars.

The more I think of it I wonder if BMC had everything it ever dreamt of in the Minor, and that a concerted development of the car might have been more beneficial to the long-term health of the British motor industry if it had merely developed the car over a prolonged period, like VW did with the Beetle.

Back in the mid-Eighties "Car" magazine chose its annual Top Ten cars. It included the Caterham 7, the Range Rover, the Porsche 911, and the Bentley Turbo R.

A month later one of its readers wrote in and suggested that if these ageing vehicles were really the best the motor industry could muster then perhaps the way forward was not to invest in new product but to hire the world's best development engineers and employ them on a 30 year contract.

Perhaps if BMC had decided to forego the front wheel drive revolution and had simply subjected the Minor to a process of continual improvement the volume British motor industry might still be with us?

On the other hand, if it weren't for manufacturers like BMC and Citroen who dared to push the envelope car design would have stagnated, and we'd all be driving developed versions of the Ford Zephyr. Then again, isn't that what BMW 3-series are doing?

All of which is getting too philosophical: you can tell that I've been at the beer again.

Back to the Minor: somewhere recently - I forget where - I read of a proposal for a Minor SuperSport, developed by one Donald Healey. Anyone know of this?

Finally (you're thinking: "will he never end?") and going off at a bit of tangent, why did Morris in the early days of the Minor stick with the aged 918cc sidevalve unit for cars exported to the US? It occured to me that as MG was doing good business with the MG TD, an 1250cc XPAG OHV engined Minor might have been a suitable riposte to the emerging Beetle. Not only that but the commonality of the engine in the Moggie and the MG would have meant that Morris' US dealers would not have had to stock parts for. and service, two different engines and all the rest of it.

Perhaps Jonathan Wood is correct: the British volume motor industry was lost when Morris failed to capitalise on the mass global appeal of the Minor.

All of us here surely reckon that there should be over 20 million Minors on the world's road network, and that Herr Hitler's Beetle should have been a footnote in automotive history.


PS I don't think the Minor was ever influenced by a Renault. Issigonis said that in designing the Minor he was going through his "American Period" and
it was most likely the Packard Clipper that occupied his thoughts when conceiving the car's styling.

Just one comment. I think the "bent bit of wire" referred to the Austin Seven crank. May be wrong!!

Issigonis did copy American styling, as did the French:-



you can see many design details simmilar to the Minor.

If only the Americans hadn't lost the plot with car styling from the 60's onwards*!

* - except for the occasional exception

The more I think of it I wonder if BMC had everything it ever dreamt of in the Minor, and that a concerted development of the car might have been more beneficial to the long-term health of the British motor industry if it had merely developed the car over a prolonged period, like VW did with the Beetle.

The export market was growing well - and certain markets, such as America were screaming for a Minor with a bit more power and the sidevalve Minor had been keeping up in sales with the early Beetle. Morris had laid plans to give these markets the Minor they really wanted (overhead cam 1500 IIRC) but this was blocked due to the BMC merger issues - The Minor was only allowed to have the 'coorporate small car engine' and therefore downgraded for the sidevalve engine to the series 2 engine. Minor exports nosedived and with the improved beetle their exports rocketed. Over the years the asthmatic series 2 engine was developed into what became the 'fabulous' A series engine, however the export battle for the Minor had been lost. A 1275 A-series Minor would have been another opportunity (something that could have been on par performace wise with the early Escort) but by this time BMC had stagnated and would only allow knee-jerk developments.

If the Minor had been given the new powerful (Morris) engine in the mid 50's then maybe the beetle would be just a quirky strange car and the Minor would have been the world's biggest seller.

As for FWD - I think Issy did himself proud with the Mini. He was probably lucky that his personality managed to push this innovative new car through to production - other such innovation got canned.
Following the Mini was a pre-golf 4 seater small practical FWD hatchback (there is a prototype at Gaydon). This did get canned by the management, and maybe if it hadn't, then BMC could have continued as a global leader, instead of falling 15 years behind and bringing out the Metro far far far too late (after VW & Ford had taken major small car market share with their little hatchbacks).

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the failings of BMC were not from lack of innovation - merely from a failing to implementing the innovation properly or like many cases just filing it in the bin

Whats a Minor like with a 1500CC Triumph engine?? I don't recall ever seeing one with that engine.

"a modified traveller with 1275, non standard seats + disk brakes win 'best in show'. "

Most of us in the East Kent branch would not consider that a modified car!

chickenjohn wrote:Whats a Minor like with a 1500CC Triumph engine?? I don't recall ever seeing one with that engine.

I would imagine nose heavy, thirstier and at best slightly torquier but no more powerful. So the only reason to do it would be to get an easy (aside from probably quite major body and propshaft mods) "6 speed" overdrive gearbox IMO.

I guess the Minor if hypothetically developed by BL would have had a 1275cc A series, disk brakes, and possibly an ARB.

I think the problem with most modern cars (i.e. after the 1970's) lacking in distict character compared to the Beetle, Mini, Minor etc is because the cars are no longer the brain child of an individual brain such as Issigonis.

Ray - I agree - as a Mini owner myself I am glad that BMC let Issigonis pursue the ten-foot terrier, but sad that BMC's accountants couldn't get their sums to work.

Jonathan Wood's Issigonis biog poses the question what if Morris had really exploited the Minor's potential before the Austin takeover of 1952, and Cowley had taken over Longbridge? It seems that prior to the merger Leonard Lord at Austin would issue the edict to his sales people to
price an Austin £5 cheaper than its Morris equivalent. Having worked at Morris he knew that Cowley's cars were meticulously costed and that, even selling an Austin for five quid cheaper than a Morris, Longbridge would still make a tidy profit.

In the BMC era Morris' financial strictures went out of the window with the result that the Mini was sold at a loss, and the 1100 was not the money-spinner it should have been.

The failure of BMC to make any meaningful profit from the Mini was surely the fault of BMC's inability to fleece those well-heeled punters from their cash; those who spent thousands on bespoke editions from the likes of Radford, and Wood & Pickett in the car's heyday, when BMC had Vanden Plas in its portfolio.

The Golf competitor that Issi designed, but didn't get made was the hatchback Mini replacement, the 9X which I mentioned in my earlier post, the car for which Issigonis had developed the DX OHC engine in four and six-cylinder variants. Actually the prototype at Gaydon is not a Golf competitor at all - it's even shorter than the Mini, but slightly wider, and thanks to the ultra-compact engine more spacious than the Mini. Having said that Issigonis proposed a larger car, the 10X, and that would have been Britain's answer to the Golf, albeit with an in-line six-cylinder engine of 1500cc mounted transversely and driving the front wheels.

However, for very understandable reasons, the management of newly-formed British Leyland cancelled the 9X/10X project and conceived the Marina instead. In a nutshell, the problem was Ford. The Blue Oval had cornered the company car market with the Cortina, and the Escort, and won over punters who couldn't care less about the engineering-led products of BMC.

Back to the Minor: years ago, Jon Pressnell in a "C&SC" article related the tale of Morris' plans to build a Wolseley-designed 1-litre OHV unit for the car, an engine that nearly reached production but for the Austin takeover. That might have made a huge difference to the Minor story, but history shows that the 918 sidevalve four made way for the unsatisfactory 803cc Austin A-series unit, and it was only in 1956 that the Minor received the 948cc A-series. What that Wolseley unit could have done for the car, and for BMC's later models is another might have been.

Then again, BMC did make a move towards a bigger engined Minor with the B-series engined Riley 1.5 and Wolseley 1500 and this car might have been just the job to liberate all of those US citizens who bought the Beetle, especially given that the car used the same engine as the big-selling - in the US - MGA.

Finally, nobody has ever successfully explained to me why the Minor based Wolseley and Riley were considered fine handling-small saloons, whereas the B-series engined Marina, with similar front suspension to the Minor was such a pig to corner.

Finally, nobody has ever successfully explained to me why the Minor based Wolseley and Riley were considered fine handling-small saloons, whereas the B-series engined Marina, with similar front suspension to the Minor was such a pig to corner.

I think that comes down to the different era`s the cars come from, I once had a Riley 1.5 in the late sixties and it was OK but still liked to dive at corners but was a 50`s design, but by the time the Marina came along in the 70`s it had to compete with much better set ups just compare it with an Escort or Viva of the day and you can soon tell that there is a world of difference.

I think that comes down to the different era`s the cars come from

I'd agree with that quite a bit - My Minor handles fantastically - for it's age.
However if you were one of todays' inexperienced drivers and took it out in the wet driving as if it was a Eurobox - it would most likely get called a death trap for it's ability to pirrouette on damp greasy corners. The B series Marina had more power without more grip - but I can't comment on how that felt as I've ever driven one.

The other reason that Marina's were so slated is fashion. It became fashionable to slate a Marina - often the people spreading the comments had never driven one.
The same fate fell upon all Rover products. It was popular to criticise Rover's quality whenever a car/friends Rover broke down, but if a vW broke down, most people overlooked it. The British media would bandwagon any reliability statistic that showed Rover cars to be in the bottom of a table. None ever showed the statistics if they looked good for Rover.

For recent years I've seen the Rover 45 listed in a European reliability table in the top 5 (flanked by Toyota and Honda)! And a Merc in the bottom 5...
Needless to say, that's not going to get into the newspapers as it doesn't fit with fashion "German cars are good / English cars are bad" regardless of facts. For examples of this - watch almost any episode of Top Gear featuring German and English cars.

Could not agree more with both comments!! I almost fell down with laughter when I got told the Minor was a good handling car right after it had just spun out on a greasy (But thankfuly quiet) roundabout!! For its age the Morris Minor must have been groundbreaking like a new Jag with electronic stability controls but compaired to todays standards the older cars are just not up to it!

One car I have to say I am still VERY impressed with is the mini!!!!! What a car!!!! it feels like it has acceleration when it hasnt realy!!! and it grips round corners like a dream!!! roundabouts and sharp corner become increadibly fun!!!

[quote="chickenjohn"]I hope that whoever does this is a very skilled metalworker and knows exactly what they are doing or they could end up with a dangerous vehicle
quote]

it could even give a new slant on Disney`s end to the Lovebug Film

If anyone wants to try an aircooled engine (flat4) in a Minor then I have a 4 litre new engine here in the garage. Makes about 130hp at 2800rpm and maybe up to about 200+ at 4500rpm.

On the subject of the Mosquito, there seems to have been 6 narrow cars (Mosquito) made pre Minor, one in 1943, two in 1946, and three in 1947 and all but one are recorded as scrapped.
Given that the only one not listed as scrapped was made in January 1947 and the widening exercise was done in 1947 after some production had started, the missing car has not yet reappeared it must be assumed scrapped. It may well have been the car that Issigonis had cut in half to space apart to get to the dimension that ended up as Minor !!. Two cars are known to have had flat four engines, one 800cc and one1100cc, both 1947 cars. this is all well documented.
I have not seen or heard of anyone recreating a Moquito, but I have been studying the construction of the early Minor for a long time, I have a bundle of notes and dimensions, a few pictures of the Mosquitos and quite a few ideas on how to do it. It is perhaps a nutty idea, but it appeals to me. I have sourced a rear axle the correct width, I think a Bradford/Jowett flat four is as close as you could get, given the details available. It would entail stipping a split screen 2 door shell back to component panels as its not as simple as cutting either 4" out of the middle or 2" each side of the transmission tunnel. I think it very possible, difficult but definitly do-able. There are a hundred problems but after I have finished my present Moggie project (full length hearse) I intend to search out a rotten two door, a scrap candidate, people are still scrapping them and others are still customizing them so I feel it would be no bad thing that I was doing. If nothing more, it would fill a gap in Moggie history and also answer quite a few questions.
I am nearing retirement and I don't intend to roll over and die just yet, anyone out there fancy to come along for the ride, or to any of the Morris parts suppliers, fancy helping with some cheap panels in way of sponsorship, if I do it, then the publicity will be BIG in Morris circles

Posted this before but this shows a flat boxer motor connected to a minor gearbox don't think it ever got truly identified

The flat 4 engine was barely a passing, fleeting, thought. When Issigonis was tasked to design the Minor he was told in no uncertain terms that it would be fitted with an "existing engine" anything else would not be considered due to the expense both of developing a new power unit and also In fact at the prototype stages Issigonis was more interested in 2 stroke engines for future designs, but struggled when bench testing with all kinds of issues, he was however no more going to fit that than a flat 4.
He is on record as despising the VW and its flat 4 power unit and went as far as publicly insulting anyone that bought one.
It is often cited that the oversize width of the engine bay is attributed to a flat 4 being fitted,however the additional 4 inches of width was added as a cosmetic design change by Issigonis and passed by Miles Thomas, after the in line 4 cylinder engine had also been determined as the power unit.
The flat 4 myth is just that,Miles Thomas would never have allowed it,Issigonis didnt like it and the A series engine is far sweeter to listen to, drive or even look at.
So endeth the diatribe.

leyther8008 wrote:Posted this before but this shows a flat boxer motor connected to a minor gearbox don't think it ever got truly identified

This looks more like a flat two - I wonder if there were any flat twos around at the time. 2cv certainly but the engine doesn't look like the one above

Another view of it set in a racing chassis with some more obvious minor bits witness the suspension legs motor is a flat two but no idea what. Its certanly an odd one appears to have water cooled bores but air cooled heads.

A reply to the comment about the flat four engine and VW Beatles, no myths really. Issigonis disliked Germans, enough said, but I have yet to read anywhere that he disliked the Beatle, he was also closly related to Bernd Pischetsrieder, former chairman of VW AG. If you read the book "Alec Issigonis the man who created the Mini" all will be clear about his feelings for all things German, the first world war abruptly and horribly ended a very happy period of his life.
The flat four engine.
Both Isigonis and Thomas were both briliant in their own ways, Thomas allowed Issigonis free range to develop ideas, Issigonis played with all sorts of flat four, flat twin, four stroke, twostroke engines, The fact that Issigonis was so very far sited in all things mechanical, he would never have dismissed anything untill he had proved it unworthy of further investigation, the Minor and Mini are proof of this beyond doubt.
Quote from page 28 of Paul Skilleters book 'Morris Minor',
'Another project centered around a four-stroke 'flat four'[ engine, and this was 'very much more serius' (than the flat two-strokes). It appealed to Issigonis because its horizontal configuration would reduce the centre of gravity of the car, and its shortness would leave proportionally more space for passengers. It found favour with Miles Thomas too, because the design allowed was such that either smaller or larger cylinder barrels could be fitted,'
etc etc (read it for yourselves ).
The flat four was much more than a passing, fleeting thought.The truth is that no money or time was available to develop a new engine, Issigonis was dissapointed that he had to fit the gasping, wheezy engine from the Morris Eight into the Minor, definatly not a sweet engine-not untill the 'A' series came about. The Jowett flat engine had been about for years and sounds good (my opinion) in its own right. It prooved itself over and over in racing and rallying, again its all out there to read.
Its all possibly speculative anyway, but history is there and shows that the Mosquito was fitted with both 800 and 1100 flat fours, all in period with Jowett, so my idea still remains undaunted that a Moquito replica is possible and the Jowett is the nearest available power source in looks and design.
I am open minded about any comments and welcome all, its what a forum is all about, more comments and ideas can only bring about more food for thought, but please, please do some reading. I read a lot, but cannot read everything, so I am open to any comments/ideas, but give me some back up or reference to verifiy what is being stated. I intend no offence to anyone whatsoever. I may be sure of something, but that does not make it fact, we are all human and I may well be wrong. Keep it coming, I need all info available ;-)))