Morris Minor: The Biography

Product Description

A celebration of cultural detail memory obsession & of lives lived by choice in the slow humane lane Independent The split screen the indicators poking up like perspex orange fingers the notoriously rust-prone floors the pootling exhaust note...just some of the much-loved characteristics of the Morris Minor or Morris 1000. Designed by Sir Alec Issigonis back in 1948 this bulbous little creation was Britains first mass-appeal car. By 1972 some 1.6 million were built. There were variants like the Morris Traveller (timber-framed estate) & the Morris Million (painted pink). For thousands of newly marrieds or penurious students it was their first car. It was also the kind of car in which the district nurse did her rounds. Martin Wainwright (who proposed to his wife over the gearstick of a Morris Minor) gives us a quirky & fascinating history of this quintessentially British car. Youll find everything from the post-70s vogue for restoring & rebuilding Morris Minors to the alarming habit of their bonnets to open at speed & entirely obscure your vision not to mention the esoteric photo exhibition devoted to abandoned Morris Minors on the West Coast of Irel&. A very solid seller in hardback it is now in B-format paperback. Martin Wainwright is the author of The Guardian Book of April Fools Day & editor of A Lifetime of Mountains & A Gleaming Landscape (all Aurum). He lives in Leeds. His latest book for Aurum is on the Mini.