Morris Minor 1000

Another nostalgia-trip for me, seeing this parked in the road opposite my house.

The Morris Minor 1000 was one of the most popular cars in the UK in the 50s. It was versatile, inexpensive, and no more unreliable than other cars of its day. This was the deluxe version with timber moulding, echoing the 'shooting brakes' we used to see in American TV shows like Lassie and Champion the Wonder Horse.

It brings a smile to people of a certain age, remembering days of travel rugs, picnics spread out in a field, dandelion and burdock, banana sandwiches, deck chairs, bracing seaside holidays, and the ever-present motoring smells of oil and petrol.

This was the pre-post-modern era, after the war when no-one was rich, and because of the welfare state, no-one needed to be poor. When, because we had Done the Right Thing as a nation, people felt proud to be British. When if your family could afford a Morris Minor you felt comfortably well-off. When a few seats trashed at a Bill Haley concert was reckoned a riot.