Originally posted by Dartmoor Dave Wonderful shots of a car that gives me pure joy every time I see one. And thanks especially for the shot showing the rear door mechanism. I remember being endlessly fascinated by the beautiful simplicity of it as a kid, and I got exactly that same feeling again when I saw that photo. It's the same feeling I get when I'm working on one of my Takumars: that sense of the pure rightness of how each component is designed to do just the thing it has to do, and does it beautifully. A feeling that I never get from modern day plastics and electronics.
I'm not sure exactly how much of a hopeless geek that makes me, but probably quite a lot of one.
I feel good for being able to bring such joy into your life, Dave. I think we are fellow geeks. My latest geek thing is making all my DSLRs WiFi capable (even the ones that only use CF cards) with Wifi SD cards. And I have achieved it. Do I really need that capability? Probably not. I just wanted to see if it could be done and I did it.
Originally posted by paulh Great shots of those Morris Minors, Ray. Back in Calif in the 80s I had a friend whose dream was to transform his little beat up Minor into one of those beauties. The car was driveable, but family obligations and other expenses kept him from achieving that.
Back then I owned a '70 Austin America - a fun little car as well. I think it had the same 1275cc engine, but with front wheel drive (were the Minors rear-wheel drive?). I think it only had a single SU carb, unlike the duals in your photos. Nice shots & thanks for the memories!
Yes, Paul, the Morris Minors were rear-wheel drive but it was basically the same engine that was turned east-west in the engine bay and started life in the Morris Mini and many other variants after that. Your Austin America was one of those. It was known as the Austin 1100 in Australia and was made during my time at BMC.
Here are a couple more images from that Minor rally day.
This one is a very similar colour to mine.
This is a stock standard engine bay.
A Morris Minor Ute and trailer.
And this one is from my Pentax Spotmatic film days - my Morris Mini S. With an Austin 1800 in the background.