Morris Minor Owners Club

hello,
second post as a newbie.
i am a 46 year old woman with her 1st moggie ( although I have been in love for at least 35 years)
Are there lots of girl owners/drivers out there, or are we dominated by the 'chaps'???
By the way ' James' is 50 years young on Sat, and i have had him for 3 weeks now.

Good evening Pence. Welcome to the Forum. My good lady don't drive but is a keen member.

welcome and if i had a good woman i am sure she would drive a moggie

Ladies love Moggie Minors...

These fine little cars have not done my chances any harm over the years!!

Welcome.

Hi, welcome from another lady owner!!
I love my moggie, my new year's resolution is to do maintenance work on her myself this year - I have talked about it a lot but not done much . They are brilliant if you want to learn more about the mysteries of the internal combustion engine! If you have a modern car there is so little scope for doing any home maintenance at all.
In the last but one issue of Minor Matters there is a brilliant article by a lady owner about how she does quite a bit of work on her car herself now, despite being totally inexperienced when she bought it.
Hope you are enjoying your car, one of the nice things about having a Minor is the number of people who comment on it and say it's good to see it being used.

Welcome to the forum ! I tend to do the driving but Kelly is always willing to help with maintenance and servicing. Enjoy you car !!
Steve.

Is James your only car or a "Second" car you have aquired after 35 years of wanting one? What is it about the Morris Minor that you like; are there other cars you like or is it a "Minor" thing?

Welcome.

I suspect a lot of the members posting here are male, but the MMOC itself isn't male-dominated.

Chauvinist attitudes do persist in certain pre-historic corners of the moggie universe but then so what? The dinosaurs are never the good-looking guys.

Chauvinism can work both ways .

Interesting to see your location. Some friends of mine are in the process of moving to France (50 miles east of La Rochelle). As they have a garage full of classic cars and bits of classic cars (Including a complete MG Midget, belonging to the lady of the house, but thats been in bits awaiting rebuild since 1992 ), there is quite a lot to move (Not sure I could face it). They have had Minors in the past (As regular cars). Its nice to know they stand a chance of seeing at least a few Minors in France. So far they have said that Renault 4s are still quite popular where they are going (Besides the ubiquitous 2CV).

Further to the last post. Wow what a response.

As of 2 hours ago, James is my only car and i intend to keep it that way.

I fell in love with moggies when my Aunt (a fantastic eccentric spinster) had one in the 70's.
I love cars that are quirky and individual, not a standard shape or design where you have to look at the name to see what it is!
When I passed my test I had a sucession of Minis, then my family increased- husband, children, dogs etc, and my cars got progressively bigger.
Now it's just me and the dog, I can get a car that suits my character.

James is mechanically sound, but needs some cosmetic help (bit like me), so he is an ongoing project, and I am going to learn some skills myself.

I intend to take him to some rallies, and meet the rest of you!!

well u will learn a lot from this site that is for sure
and u will get to know your car better

pence wrote:Now it's just me and the dog, I can get a car that suits my character.

That's got a lot going for it . I don't have a dog or cat right now, though I've very happy memories of both and wouldn't rule out either again, if circumstances permitted.

I too had a number of Issigonis's other masterpiece, the Mini. Although they are so very different, there is still something about driving the Minor, which reminds me of the Mini (Apart from the speedo). Ultimately the Mini held the road better and being lighter, got more out of any given engine but I feel the Minor is more sturdy.

For what its worth (Assuming you don't already have one), a good garage is the most important piece of equipment you'll ever have. As for the Minor, they don't come any more inviting to the home mechanic. When I lift the bonnet of mine, I feel like it says "Welcome, come on in", whereas some of the modern stuff just swears at you. To be fair, both my MGs are much like the Minor in that respect, though the V8 engine doesn't leave a lot of room around the edge. One thing they all share is superb spares back up and in a runabout, that's vital (Though my main runabout is a bicycle).

My Old Mutt, Harry used to love going for drives in the traveller He'd have a good sniff round and then get excited looking out of the windows

Pence... minors and mutts, we'll get along fine then!
Wha'ts your mutt?

During the 1970s, my father had a Lotus Elan and our Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Storm, really liked that car. The footwell of an Elan is small and he would go right down into the passenger footwell and wedge himself in. Storm didn't mind a ride in the car anyway (Unless it was to the vets and he knew the way there!!) but the Elan was his favourite.

Meg, the cat, arrived at my parent's house in January 1992 (I was visiting them at the time) as a stray kitten. She didn't like going anywhere, apart from into the adjoining field. I suppose you could say she appeared to dislike the Traveller least. After one of her last visits to the vet, my mother went to the supermarket and I got into the back seat and got Meg out of her basket. She seemed amazed to see so many people and cars whizzing by; she didn't seem overly worried but I still think she was glad to get home. She certainly didn't like going fast (Unless it was on her own legs) and we used to say that if cats had cars, Meg would have owned an Austin 7 Chummy.[frame][/frame]

There are (and have been in the past) more women on this board than I've met on any of the other classic car owner's groups of which I've been a member. And also more women doing their own maintenance - or at least coming out of the closet as doing so

It's been very interesting being on the web for so long (ah, the good old days of BBSs), from when I used to work in IT with a carefully non-gendered nick because I got fed up of all the "oh she's just a girl, she couldn't understand X" or, the rather depressing offers of dates - to the transformation of these more enlightened times, and this board is for the most part very good at not assuming that women don't/can't do car stuff

Which is a yay, for Moggie owners, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, yeah, so 'Hi' from a woman who lurks more than posts these days - less and less free time - and who is interestingly the owner of a car owned by an eccentric spinster in the 70s. The very little history I got told me she used to take 'becca (my minor) to and from the local tea-shops in Essex - and that she passed down the car through the family when she got too old to drive...