I’m part way through the preparation of a fairly lengthy post on a key part of the British motor industry, and this has needed some deep diving on parts of the history of BMC. These deep dives sometimes turn down rabbit holes, and you can often find some interesting things at the bottom of them. This is a case in point – a photo of a display of the full UK market range of BMC cars from 1956, taken at a display centre somewhere which looks just as 1956 as the cars.
From the front, left column
MG Magnette
Austin A95 Westminster
Morris Minor 1000
Austin Metropolitan (Nash Metropolitan)
Morris Oxford
Morris Minor Traveller
A brace of Morris Commercial J2, a van and a minibus
Central column
Austin A105, an upmarket derivative of the A95
Wolseley 15/50
Morris Cowley (a decontented lower power Oxford)
Austin A35
Riley Pathfinder
Austin Princess limousine
Morris Oxford (MO series) van
Morris J Type van , a favourite of the Post Office
Right column
Austin J40 pedal car, built in factory set up in South Wales for miners invalided by pneumoconiosis
Austin A40 Cambridge
Austin A35 (then new and Austin’s best seller which may be why there are two of them)
Wolseley 6/90
Austin A95 Countryman
Austin (or Morris) LD van
But, no MG or Austin-Healey sports cars for some reason. Still, most bases are covered, and all with drip trays.
How about that spiffy model at the head of the right column? The PEDMOBILE! I can imagine all the children who fell in love with that. Nice photo, too.
The Austin J40 – J for Junior in this case.
https://www.lakelandmotormuseum.co.uk/collections/featured-collections/pedal-cars/austin-junior-40-j40
I had one! Drove it down the hill outside the house causing my first traffic jam aged 4.
I’m looking forward to the upcoming article.
Is that a mirror or a drip pan under the A40 sedan on the right?
“and all with drip trays” That just made my day! Thank You. I too, is looking forward to the article.
Wonderful photograph!
Concerning drip trays under the cars;
Many exhibit halls, especially ones with hardwood floors as seen here, require drip trays to prevent oils and solvents from penetrating into the wood. Since the late 1970s I’ve been involved with multiple interior displays of antique cars, from car club national meets to shopping centers trying to attract customers.
Many venues not only require drip trays [or flat disposable absorbable pads] under motors, gearboxes and rear axles, but also small pads of carpeting placed under the tires. Local fire codes often dictate the vehicle battery be disconnected.
In pre-1960s vehicles and machinery, many seals around rotating shafts were made of leather. On a new vehicle those leather seals need to swell and seat against the shaft, and these brand new cars would sometimes seep around the shafts. If you watch Youtube videos of old car factories where they feature a line of new cars exiting the building, you can often note how darkened the ground is between the paths of the tires. This is from leaking seals on newly started & driven cars.
In 1986 I had arranged to exhibit about 20 antique cars in a very prestigious shopping mall in Bethesda, MD. During the final fire inspection, the fire Marshall decreed that all the cars be taken back outside and the fuel tanks drained, the filler caps sealed, then the cars be pushed back into position.
As I had an explosives background in the Army, and I held a BATF commercial fireworks license, I pointed out to the fire Marshall that in a fire, a full 20 gallon tank of fuel, with a vented filler cap, would simply burn without exploding. However if that same tank was empty of liquid fuel and contained 20 gallons of gasoline FUMES, it now had the explosive potential of 2 full sticks of Dynamite.
The BATF license had an emergency phone number on the back, and I asked him to call the number for assistance. The BATF said “Best practice” was a full tank of fuel, then a plastic sandwich bag placed over the fill cap, held tight with black electrical tape.
The bags worked so well that on the way home, one of the cars developed a fuel starvation problem. because we forgot to remove the plastic bag!
We had to remove tbe gas tanks and batteries on display vehicles sent to a local shopping mail at the North West London dealership I worked at. An hours labour on each vehicle. No way around it due to UK Health and Safety rules.
Great picture, Roger! Many of these were imported into Uruguay in very small quantities, and so I remember them well in a country which used its cars to the ground and where by some strange tax loop my wife´s grandfather was able to buy a Jaguar Mark VIII for the price of a Ford Fairlane. So, damn the badges. But in the UK, I can’t see how BMC would manage not overstepping its brands in terms of price. Of course, the US Big Three had being doing that for years, but in a much larger market.
These were the golden days, before Leonard Lord began to engineer the decline of BMC.
The mediocrity of Austin design was standardised across the company.
That mediocrity that led to the Mini, 1100 and MGB.
I’ve been reading Pat Foster’s book on the Met. He implies that BMC didn’t try very hard to sell the domestic version under the Austin name. This picture shows that they were trying at least once. Still, the sales didn’t amount to much. Foster estimates total production from ’54 to ’60 as 110k. 80k were sold in US, 10k in Britain, 10k elsewhere. That’s about a thousand per year in Britain.
I realize that I am being simplistic and will be criticized for it, but I see 3, maybe 4 basic cars, while the rest are just variants of those cars.
Of the cars pictured, the Wolseley 15/50 is my favorite.
At this time the Austin and Morris ranges were stlll largely separate, though most used Austin derived engines, so there were different bodies from the Austin and Morris sides of the business for all sizes.
Md-range there were three basic 1½ litre shells: Austin A40/50 Cambridge, Morris Cowley/Oxford and MG Magnette/Riley/Wolseley. The bigger Austin A95 Westminster did share doors with the A40/50 though and looks much the same despite being wider as well as longer.
In the next generation of 1½ litre cars the ranges would all share the one basic Farina body so only would differ in detail finish and, to a lesser extent, power output.
The smaller A35 and Morris Minor ran alongside each other in some forms until 1968, though the ‘Austin se7en’ Mini replaced the A35 sedan in 1959. The Morris badged Mini never replaced the Minor though.
Ironically BMC could have rationalised its range round three basic shells by 1960 but instead began to develop another FWD range alongside the existing cars and then became part of the whole BLMC conglomerate, throwing even more parallel ranges into the mix with Triumph, Rover and Jaguar.
The Farina A40 actually replaced the A35 – the se7en came in at a lower price point.
Sadly the Farina 1.1/2 litre cars all shared Austin suspension and steering. They needed Farina styling because Lord had dispensed with the services of Gerald Palmer.
Perhaps to a degree the A40 Farina was an insurance policy in case the more radical FWD Mini flopped, but, unlike the A30, the A40 Farina was never given the ‘Seven’ name, so BMC saw the Mini as the spiritual replacement.
I agree it’s a shame the more satisfactory suspension, steering and wider tracks of the Morris range gave way to the Austin way of doing things.
Either Lord wasn’t much of a driver, or he let his dislike of William Morris passing over him for promotion back in ’36 cloud his judgment twenty years later. Grudge? What grudge? 🙁
In fact, there are 11 different basic cars here
A30 A40 A90 Princess Metropolitan
Minor Oxford Magnette Pathfinder
LD van J type van
Just like the big three in USA…
Thank you for this article and great photo .
Also the link to the Austin Jr .
Because I’m weird I think driving LBC’s is a good idea and am trying to get my Met FHC running again .
-Nate
Funny that the A35 is new as it looks quite old fashioned compared to some of the other models. The van went all the way to 1968!
The A35 was basically just an update of the A30, so the styling was already five years old by 1956, though that was still three years newer than the Morris Minor.
If it had used a wider, lower grille like the other Austins (or the Minor, says he, cheekily!) it wouldn’t have looked as out of place. Just tool a new front panel and new grille.
I had an A35 van in the late Sixties -it had mechanical rear brakes which were completely seized .
Stopped OK [ provided you used enormous pedal pressure] with just the front brakes .
The starter motor was buggered but it could be cranked by hand thank God as I never had any money in those days !
What a fascinating picture!
I remember seeing most of these as a boy. Dad had a Series II Oxford, which was never as common a sighting on the road as the equivalent Austins. I don’t think the Metropolitan made it to Australia, and I’m not sure about the A105, though Great-Auntie Bessie won an A95 in a lottery (and kept driving it for about twenty years!). I don’t remember seeing many of the big Rileys; the Wolseleys were more common but still a rare sighting.
What really stands out is ye olde Morris Minor. Its replacement had already been designed, but got handballed to Australia where it became the Morris Major, here a ’58.
My Mum drove the Austin Lancer version of that car in the early 70s.
As a youngster, I never liked it, it made an embarrassing farting sound when the accelerator was released to change gear, or maybe it was the way Mum drove it, she was never a natural when it came to driving.
One day the the front suspension collapsed on one side when rounding a corner.
It was replaced by a 4 cylinder Torana which proved much more durable, and more polite with its sound effects.
I remember that sound well! I’d forgotten all about it till now…
They were very popular cars, combining the Minor’s agility with a decent amount of poke and more modern looks. A friend had one in high school, and I remember he was very fast around corners – sure glad his front end didn’t collapse while I was on board. I’ve heard of that happening to Minors that aren’t maintained well.
Mostly Austin engines, but not entirely. The C series 6 was a Nuffield design, yet appeared in the A95 and A105 pictured (and the predecessor A90, of which I owned a lhd Canadian import).
BMC was the world’s largest exporter of motor vehicles at the time of this picture. Down to what was left of Imperial Preference trade policies, largely (before Britain’s exclusion from the EEC made that a liability). But also down to a reputation for quality product, something hard to believe in hindsight.
But Timothy Whisler, in his book: The British Motor Industry 1945-1994, A Case Study in Industrial Decline, makes the persuasive case that path dependence already spelled out the outcome even at the time of this photo.
Great shot all these cars used to be very common here and plenty have survived this was before the plunge into Issigonis stupidity when BMC still made reasonably good cars, Ive owned or driven most of them some good some not so good I prefer the C series powered cars and owned several,
Austin out dated and poorly thought out mechanical designs stayed too long hydro/mechanical brakes were a cheap and nasty idea as were lever arm shock absorbers
I never understood why they did those weird hydraulic front/mechanical rear brakes. Maybe because Morris had full hydraulics, and Lord (of Austin) didn’t want to be seen to be following Morris? Did any other country’s cars have this curious system?
The Austin pedal car is a familiar site for many people who visited Rotterdam Zoo Blijdorp, as it was used by a photographer at the entrance gate to make pictures of families with children.
And I stil have a copy of my mom with her curly black hair and her 3 kids, my kid brother behind the wheel.
The Austin was kept in mint condition and was used until the late eighties before it was retired.
As for the state picture of all BMC models and makes, it was there and then the downfall set in that ended in the Leyland disaster, too many models, too many variations too many enemies operating in the same group.