A Lowlight sidevalve Morris Minor MM tourer, possibly photographed in Sri Lanka.

OldClassicCar - visit the OCC homepage. (C) R. Jones 2012

Minor 'Lowlight' Tourer.

This Minor MM photo came in a batch of photos that were taken in Sri Lanka, but whether this Minor was also photographed there I'm not too sure, the style of registration plate isn't quite the same as on British cars of the era, although it is RHD.

This lovely black and white photograph shows a gent with his shiny (new?) Morris Minor tourer, a very early example of the classic Minor, identifiable by its low-set headlamps, usually known as the 'lowlight'. This one is especially rare as most lowlights were saloons, not tourers.

The Minor, or 'Mosquito' as the prototypes were known, was penned by Alec Issigonis, a respected car designer, who would go on to design further legendary cars such as the fwd Mini and 1100. The small plate fitted to the front bumper is a reminder that the Mosquito design was a much narrower car than the final production Minors were.

Shortly before full-scale production was due to commence, Issigonis sliced a prototype in half lengthways, moved the two halves apart until he was happy with the look of the new car, and instructed that tooling be made/modified to accomodate this drastic change. By this point, much of the tooling had been put in place for production, including that for the front bumpers. Hence early cars had a 2 piece bumper blade, split, and widened by the use of a blank plate bolted in-between to bridge the gap. Later cars would have a bumper built to the correct width, but all Minors right up to the end of production in 1971 would feature the 4" section in the centre of their bonnet.

All MMs were powered by the plodding 918cc sidevalve engine that had been used in the Series E, which itself dated back to the 8s of the pre-war years. The Series 2 Minor would come along in 1952, and feature the 803cc A Series engine from Austin A30, following the merger of the Nuffield Organisation (Morris) with the Austin Motor Company, resulting in the BMC combine.

Lowlight Minor saloon.

After I published this page, with the tourer photo above, Les sent over this scan showing an early sidevalve MM Minor saloon, 2 door. This looks to me like a period BMC press photo, probably dating to 1948 or 1949, just as production of the Minor was gaining momentum.

In 2010 I added an original b/w photo of a later tourer to the gallery, see it on the Series 2 Minor tourer page.

Return to Motoring Photographs Page 2.

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