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"The Morris Minor, with its wooden panels and distinctive curves" - the one I had must have been bodged/a fake then. Can't remember any wooden panels.
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"The Morris Minor, with its wooden panels and distinctive curves" - the one I had must have been bodged/a fake then. Can't remember any wooden panels.
A traveller perhaps?
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I was told that the timbers on the Morris travellor were actually a structural part of the body, but not on the mini traveller. Can anyone enlighten me?
H
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Dunno how they came up with that, I agree with the Moggie. I suppose they asked the GBP which is notorious for having the attention span of a goldfish. "Fire Engine" As if no other country in the World have them.....what a load of guff.
I would have included the Reliant probably, Bently 3 litre, Bristol (probably the most British of cars) any number of MGs, a Morgan etc etc also the Allegro - no other sane country would have come up with that.
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The ash framework on a Minor Traveller is structural, bou on the Mini Traveller it's just stuck on afterwards!
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There were also Morris vans fitted with windows and stuck-on wood just as there are a lot more "tourers" than were ever built by Morris.
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An invention of tabloid journalists, used to describe a Reliant Regal.
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Compiled by a motoring expert I see - what's a Robin Reliant?
An invention of tabloid journalists, used to describe a Reliant regal.
PS - Edit button, please.
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There were also convertible versions of the Minor.
I had a 1960 1098cc Morris Minor (bought in 1964 with 19k on the clock from two elderly ladies who lived in Blackpool) and went all over the UK in it, including on honeymoon.
Belting little car and everyone I know who had one always refers to them in awe.
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1. Morris Minor - yep agree with that.
2. Aston Martin - best british? American owned (no bad thing though)
3. Rolls Royce - yep agree with that but....
4. Fire Engine- Do they mean a Dennis?
5. Mini - About as British now as sourkraut
6. Black Cab - Yes it's British!
7. Double decker bus -Yes it's British!
8. Robin Reliant - A British Embarassment.
9. Milk Float .. A British Embarassment
10. Green Goddess- A British Embarassment . A dinosaur from years ago.
Only the Black cab, Double Decker and Morris Minor worthy of being on this list. All at the cutting edge of technology too.
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And a Green Goddess is a Fire Engine. Daft Article.
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.....and anyway who actually takes part in these "polls" ?
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Nobody.. it's made up by a publicist.
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..this survey is done by the same people as Family Fortunes.. We asked 100 people what is their favourite colour car?
Of course they did!
Cobblers.
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7. Double decker bus -Yes it's British!
And is much loved by tourists, but as a tool of everyday transport, it's a PITA. Which is why hardly any other countries use them.
Another British embarassment.
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I disagree with all this knocking of British vehicles - a tedious and a depressing activity loved by many on this forum.
The list, however derived, is populated by old vehicles - if you choose to judge them by modern standards, they will come off second best. I don't think there is an embarassment on the list - each vehicle was designed within the needs and constraints of the time.
If British manufacturing continues its decline, we won't be able to compile such a list in the not too distant future - now that will be embarrasing!!
Number_Cruncher
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NC
It's because there are no modern British vehicles with which you could populate a top ten list.
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Yes, I suppose a modern list is already tenuous.
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Arguably the Vauxhall Astra would be the most quintessentially British car after all they are Opels in all other markets.
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Spot on N_C.
Knocking is a favourite past time of the Backroom whatever the subject.
These are old vehicles but full of character. And each in its day was valuable.
& why knock tradition and the like ? A London double-decker may not be the most efficient, but its hardly a PITA. And as someone who lived outside the UK, I can tell you its nice to see buses, taxis and the like. Its most certainly not an embarassement.
Don't people ever get tired of worrying about and criticising everything everybody else does, chooses, has simply becasue they personally wouldn't ? That's how we end up wiht most of the ridiculous traffic/motoring laws we have in this country.
A bit more live and let live in this country would go a long way.
I have very fond memories of Moggy Travellers (My first art teacher), Robin Reliant (my tough, biker-mate's answer to winter and a broken leg), Mini (how many did I have or work on at Uni?), Milk floats (the electric whirr and occasional free half-bottle), Double-deckers (trips into London as a young child and later when I lived there for my first job), etc. etc.
Why be embarassed ?
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These are old vehicles but full of character. And each in its day was valuable.
That's the problem, Mark: in its day and was
The Routemaster bus was a brilliant piece of engineering with many fine qualities, but that was 40 or 50 years ago. The game has moved on, and it has been left behind -- to be replaced by imports.
Same with the Mini: a highly innovative, cleverly engineered little piece of genius, but uneconomic to make and allowed to fossilise before replaced by a German toy car. Meanwhile the French and Italians have modernised the small car, now joined by the Japanese and everyone else, and the Mini is history.
It's all very sad, but I don't see how clinging on to past glories helps.
Try making a similar list of things made in the past ten years, and it's depressing. The buses are imported (or bult on a foreign chassis), the cars are imported or made by foreign-owned companies. Just about the only thing on the list that has kept up to date is the London taxi: the TXII is a brilliant tool for its job.
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But why be "embarassed" by them ?
Don't you find your life tiring ? Incessant knocking of everything motoring with blind and blinkered thinking ?
I'm not talking about whether you are right or wrong, merely that you must find it all so tedious.
Lighten up. Find something to like and enjoy rather than this endless depressing dislike. I'd always thought you were Irish - as in from Eire. I realise now that you must be a northerner. It takes a real Brit to hate all things british with such dedication.
The primary purpose of a human in this world is not to have no impact. We are here to live and to enjoy. And if that involves motoring, then get over it. That has an impact on the world and that needs to be borne in mind, but it is not the be all and end all of existence.
[cue the doom merchants: we're all doomed, we're all going to die, the world will explode and its my attitude causing it. yawn].
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Mini. (the original) This is a car that completely changed the way cars were designed.
Moggy - Cant think of a more british car
black cab? cant think of anything more designed and suitable* for its task.
except*
Nowheels.. I am sorry you really really are talking out of your backside big time. You are utterly clueless about living and working in London.
The routemaster was and is superb at its job. The ability to leap on and off at will, the numbers you can pack in, the way the windows open and allow air in, the rugged mechanicals. To get around central london nothing beats the routemaster.
It should be no1 on that list.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Nowheels.. I am sorry you really really are talking out of your backside big time. You are utterly clueless about living and working in London.
TVM, making assumptions like that is both rude and wrong. I lived in inner London and worked in central London for about a decade. Have you?
The bus from my longest-stay home was a No. 12, which was one of the last Routemaster routes. I also lived on the 53, 73 and 36 bus routes, all of which were routemasters at the time.
When I stay in London now, the routes I use most are the 12 and 36, both of which have been replaced (at least in part) by bendy buses. They are much easier to use in every respect, except for the occasional jump out the back.
The routemaster was and is superb at its job.
If you are young, agile, not too big, and don't need to carry anything with you. Squeezing into the downstairs with shopping bags is tough work, and climbing the stairs with bags in hand on a moving routemaster is nothing short of dangerous.
The ability to leap on and off at will, the numbers you can pack in,
Pack is the right word :( They were designmed for midgets who enjoyed intimacy with strangers.
the way the windows open and allow air in,
But not enough. On a hot day, they are very stuffy places (though, to be fair, the atrocious new double-deckers manage to be much worse)
To get around central london nothing beats the routemaster.
I wouldn't mind a modernised routemaster being available on some central London routes, such as a back-and forth along Oxford Street route, for city-centre hop-on-and-off journeys. They would remain useful for that job, if they had more space
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Nowheels.
Yes I started work and lived in central london from 1973. to 1979 My job at the was traveling around the west end and city visiting customer using public transport. In the intervening years I have dont severl extending stinmts commuing to various parts. My last 5 day a week stint was from 2001 to 2004. I only do it one day a week now.
I was born in Bow
So yes I am qualified to recognise that your London, the one you see though your severely distorted and very selective glasses, is not the same London of my birth and 52 years experience.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Yes I started work and lived in central london from 1973 to 1979 My job at the was traveling around the west end and city visiting customer using public transport.
For that job, I imagine that a routemaster may be pretty much ideal. But it's not a very common usage pattern.
(Mind you, some people in the backroom would tell you that job requires a car).
So yes I am qualified to recognise that your London, the one you see though your severely distorted and very selective glasses, is not the same London of my birth and 52 years experience.
You are in a snippy mood today! But apart from the unnecessary invective, I think you make a useful point: that there are a lot of different ways to experience London.
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You are in a snippy mood today
Not at all, just browned off to the back teeth with people who have absolutely nothing to do with london, and contribute nothing to it, telling us Londoners what 's right, whats wrong, and what to do with it,
That's you BTW nowheels, just in case you missed the invective. ;)
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Not at all, just browned off to the back teeth with people who have absolutely nothing to do with london, and contribute nothing to it, telling us Londoners what 's right, whats wrong, and what to do with it,
Where is it you live, TVM? Surrey?
I spend about five days a month there, which is about same as you do.
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You are north of Watford NW, your visa is expired.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I have very fond memories of Moggy Travellers (My first art teacher), Robin Reliant (my tough, biker-mate's answer to winter and a broken leg),
It is NOT a bleedin' Robin Reliant!!!!
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>It is NOT a bleedin' Robin Reliant!!!!
Nice catch Mark
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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>>It is NOT a bleedin' Robin Reliant
.*********
Of all the mistakes to make.................
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>>It is NOT a bleedin' Robin Reliant .********* Of all the mistakes to make.................
Be such a shame if you can't get an internet connection from Luxemburg...
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It is NOT a bleedin' Robin Reliant!!!!
Were the badges on the back reversed, thus some people making the mistake of what came first?
In the same way Cavalier was on the LHS of the boot / tail lid, and Vauxhall on the RHS.
IIRC, Ford used to do this with the name of the car as well.
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You know that's total rubbish NW.
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You know that's total rubbish NW.
Got separated from the post I was answering. I mean yr remark about double deckers, tourists and what a PITA the double decker is.
Garbaggio, m'dear.
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Not according to the Reliant O.C.-www.reliantownersclub.co.uk/reliants.html
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For some reason minor celebs (i.e. non-celebs) who pretend to remeber them fondly always transpose Reliant and Robin - what they probably have in mind is Del Boy's van, which IIRC was a Reliant Regal van anyway, not a Robin.
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But this surely proves the point. All models were quintessentially British but let's face it even in the halcion days of Corona, Omopower and Hovis they were er.....rubbish.
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Reliants and Bonds were presumably spawned by a quirk of the licensing system post-war, when anyone with a motor bike licence could drive a 3 wheeler weighing 8cwt or less without taking a car test. Hence 3 wheels when 4 would clearly have been far better, fibreglass construction, and the general death of comforts. While they provided an answer to a problem they wee successful. When the number of people who could benefit diminished, they were relatively far too expensive to compete with 'proper' cars. My Dad always said Bond minicars were better, but I can't remember why, now.
The Minor was a terrific car - I learned to drive in one. Minis were amazing to drive compared to almost anything from the same era - no wonder it served paddy Hopkirk so well in 1964, notwithstanding it was designed for anything ut winning the Monte Carlo rally.
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sorry, 'dearth' of comforts - makes sense either way :-)
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I thought that.............! Reliant was the death of comfort. The only decent car from Reliant was the Scimitar, the proper version.
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>>My Dad always said Bond minicars were better, but I can't remember why, now.>>
IIRC, but may be incorrect, the Bond had the rear wheels wider apart, hence they were more stable.
I used to work in Preston (where the Bond originated) and, of course, you would see quite a few of them at the time.
My favourite was the Bug but, whilst some early Bugs were assembled at Preston, they were designed and built by Reliant, which had bought Bond; the majority were made at Tamworth.
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Bond Minicar was a ghastly device although it could be made to pirouette entertainingly with its hard-worked single front tyre squealing incessantly. Its whole engine, a sort of lawnmower thing, and transmission turned with the front wheel. The Bug, though more sophisticated and in one model capable of 90 mph (rather you than me, Squire) was similarly unstable. As for the three-wheeled Reliants, reliable and economical though they may have been, the less said the better. That anyone other than a urine-extracting foreigner can see one as a British icon beggars belief. I never watched that TV show featuring one, probably for that very reason. Simply couldn't understand why a cheeky-chappie lumpen entrepreneur would drive such a piece of carp, so found the whole thing irritating and silly.
However there was a British three-wheeler that worked well and had some competition success. That was the Aero Morgan and some of its variants. The best ones are the earliest, with a JAP V-twin in front of the (false) radiator.
Of course these lists are moronic, boring, and made up out of whole cloth by some ignorant twit.
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We have a Morgan dealership that is celebrating its 73rd year of dealing with the marque - Life's Motors - and Morgan owners come from far and wide to pay a visit.
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I did in fact own a Reliant, and I would have to question Lud's rather tart comments about a very fine car. They opened the doorway for many a motorcycle licence holder who had got fed up with getting cold and wet and they could be parked up without falling over. Admittedly, they could be induced to fall over whilst moving, but that had the benificial effect of encouraging respect for one's driving behaviour.
Back in the early seventies they were actually a bit of a babe magnet. I used to get lots of smiles from young ladies as I drove by, I obviously looked rather cool with my arm out the window and a Marlboro in my mouth.
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Tart, but not entirely condemnatory, TS. And nothing wrong with defending a widely-disparaged machine for which one has an abiding affection...
In my own case these devices include Citroen Bijou and Dyane,Alfa Romeo Arna, VW 411 and a whole row of Skoda Estelles.... I'm not a snob really.
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