Morris Minor Owners Club

I was showingmy son around my recently aquired Moggie,the other day,when he said"great car dad,how many are still left ?".Theres still,er,lots,thousands,loads,i think,sez i.Eventually i owned up and admitted i didn't know,but said"i bet i know some people who will ".
So my MMOC friends-----------------how many ???
Regards,Tom [frame][/frame]

there are thousands left on the road

Possibly three times more in garages and gardens..... and even more no-one knows about.

There must be many thousands to support the very reasonably priced spares network that we all enjoy

I estimate from DVLA registration checks that there are around 250 Series MMs on the road in Britain with a similar number of long term restorations.

Freedom of information request to the DVLA?
Or are they exempt?

I'm sure I read in Practical Classics about 3 years ago that there were still 26,000 still on the road.

I hope there are still 26,000 on the road in the UK- that is great news- safety in numbers!! More cars on the road means parts supply will still be economically viable.

We can do our bit by restoring our cars and helping others to do the same.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of type- eg, sidevalve, 803cc split screen, and the Minor 1000's- 948, 1098 as well as saloon, convertible traveller, commercial etc.

chickenjohn wrote:I hope there are still 26,000 on the road in the UK- that is great news- safety in numbers!! More cars on the road means parts supply will still be economically viable.

We can do our bit by restoring our cars and helping others to do the same.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of type- eg, sidevalve, 803cc split screen, and the Minor 1000's- 948, 1098 as well as saloon, convertible traveller, commercial etc.

Well that should be a good project for you John

And that's "on the road" not in a barn. garage or hedge awaiting restoration. I'm not sure that number includes all the minors owned overseas either.

Kevin wrote:

chickenjohn wrote:I hope there are still 26,000 on the road in the UK- that is great news- safety in numbers!! More cars on the road means parts supply will still be economically viable.

We can do our bit by restoring our cars and helping others to do the same.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of type- eg, sidevalve, 803cc split screen, and the Minor 1000's- 948, 1098 as well as saloon, convertible traveller, commercial etc.

Well that should be a good project for you John

Yes,it would, sort of like a Minor Census. The question is. How does one go about getting this information? Do DVLA give out this sort of info for free?

I'm surprised the MMOC don't have a list of all known Minors - in all the different categories?
I've got a Traveller - willing to pass the reg number and chassis plate details to anyone making a list!

but that would not account for all the morris minors owned by non club members

one would be by insurance companies, at least that way all that were on the road and sorn ones
still would lose a few in barns and fields

but i think it would give a better indication of the numbers

Common lads,were getting there.

All very refined on here, I assure you

It takes a lot of time to reasearch the numbers of cars. The Series MM Register lists all the cars that have been traced worldwide but unless people forward their car details or they turn up on for sale ads then I have no way of knowing.
If I have a reg. no. then I can check if a car is still on the DVLA database which gives me an indication if it is on the road.

I'd be even more interested in seeing how many Minors have been put back on the road over the last few years and see if the number is growing or decreasing. I wonder if my generation will keep all the restoration/parts companys going strong for years to come. Christ knows my current Moggie needs every single part replacing!

aupickup wrote:one would be by insurance companies, at least that way all that were on the road and sorn ones
still would lose a few in barns and fields

but i think it would give a better indication of the numbers

Well to start the ball rolling at the branch liason meeting yesterday there was a really helpful Footman James guy and one of the things he mentioned is that they have over 5,000 Moggies on policys.

I'm surprised the MMOC don't have a list of all known Minors - in all the different categories?
I've got a Traveller - willing to pass the reg number and chassis plate details to anyone making a list!
And it looks like Roy wants to start a Traveller list

I've rescued a fair few Minors that would have been scrapped, but plenty more get scrapped.
A few of my resto's didn't exist on ANY DVLA/insurance/MMOC records as they had been off the road for so long and needed V765 to get paperwork.

At some point there'll be a tailing off of the number of Minors found in barns and old garages, and the number scrapped won't tail off for a long while so I'd bet good money that the numbers will dwindle significantly. Whether this is happening already is hard to say.

For the first ~15 years the majority were exported anyway, so the numbers in the UK do not represent the whole picture. Many more are going overseas, usually to private individuals as the price in the UK is relatively low. e.g. My split screen traveller was advertised in the club mag (with no response) and was bought via a different advert by a nice German chap.