The engines were the best thing about BMC / BL cars by far. The B-series first appeared in the Austin A40 Devon in 1947 ( a great car that, way ahead of the competition), and the A-series in the Austin A30 in 1952, and it soon replaced the gutless side-valve engine in the Morris Minor when Austin and Morris merged..

The SU carburettor was a great invention too. Whatever else went wrong with the cars, they would start first time, hot or cold. The manual choke was never a problem on any of the several SU-equipped cars that my parents or I had.

He went over to Austin Morris 1100/1300 after those, and boy were they rubbish,except the engine.

I'm not quite old enough for a Moggie, but I owned one 1100 saloon and two estates in the sixties. The bodywork didn't like salt too much, but that saloon went all over the States on touring holidays, including the Grand Canyon and Death Valley. The Yankee cars with normal carburetters didn't like an altitude change of 10,000 feet but the SUs didn't notice. The weak point was the electric fuel pump underneath the tank - the points used to soot up every few months. I always carried a spare, which I have changed in some pretty wild places.

The second estate I sold with 70K on the clock and its new owner ran it to 90K, still on the original clutch. Can't comment on Moggies, but 1100s were OK for me.

The seats are probably from a Rover Metro.

I got some 1958 car magazines at a car boot sale - it was interesting to read about owners doing their own decokes and valve regrinds etc at something like 35,000 miles.

Interesting because I got a 1965 Minor in 1981, with 73,000 miles showing on it and no sign of the engine having been replaced from the original. I used it every day and it never really broke down.

In 1983 for 6 months I worked 130 miles distant and used to commute home every second weekend (g/f came down to visit me on the other weekends).

In late 1985 my employer relocated, and for the next 12 months I commuted 130 miles each way EVERY weekend, doing between 300 and 500 miles a week. It was shortly after I started that regime that the odometer rolled over 100,000, and the car was already 20 years old.

After those 12 months I changed employer, and was then commuting 'only' 36 miles each way.

My big mistake was to buy a second car (just because I fancied one). A bit of maintenance required on the Minor on a weekend would get passed-over because, lazily, I'd use the second car on Monday instead. The Minor was never garaged, so once that happened a few times, I was playing catch-up with its maintenance, particularly on bodywork, but perhaps also on things like brakes that were beginning to seize-up, or the headlight dipswitch that had broken permanently in the full-beam position. Once you let the little jobs mount up, you turn more and more to the other car and the Minor goes downhill.

I eventually sold it to an enthusiast who dismantled it for the many very good parts it still had. At that point it had over 134,000 miles on the clock and the engine was still great and would surprise other drivers. Oh, and I'd NEVER had to do a decoke or replace the valves - was the A-series such a big leap over earlier engines?!?

Lots and lots of fun, and why I find modern cars with auto-everything so boring.

The posters above may be thinking of the Hindustan Ambassador, based on the mid-1950s Series 2 Morris Oxford. It ceased production only this year: later versions had an Isuzu engine but the 1.5 litre B-series powered the Ambassador for many years.

Yes, It is indeed what I was thinking of. I saw one recently not far from home, registered on a 2002 plate. It had a Morris car club sticker in the window. A quick nose at it revealed disc brakes on the front and it had a plastic 1980's looking dash layout.