Dave Fisher

I’m sure I am not the only person now to realise how it is often difficult from a distance to tell a lot of cars apart, as many of them are actually starting to look very similar. A Morris Minor is of course instantly recognisable !

My own Minor breakthrough came in the late 1990’s when I knocked on the door of an old man in the town who I had seen running about in a light blue 2 door saloon. What I didn’t realise was that I knew his son through the round table but more importantly he actually had 2 Minors. Adam was by then in his late eighties and would talk about his many years of Morris Minors until the cows came home. He had had Morris Minors since the early fifties and had driven little else. He was still driving well into his 90's and only stopped when his sons confiscated the keys.

It was after a few months and many cups of coffee with Adam that I bit the bullet and bought my first Minor, a white four door saloon VSJ 214 with a 1098 engine. It wasn’t the best but it was a start.

Not only did I discover just how much fun I could have in a but I also quickly realised I was no invisible on the road, drivers would let me pull out or pull in, people would wave & smile. Rather amusingly in Aberdeen on at least a couple of occasions I found after the lunchtime pubs had closed one or two drinkers who had probably had one too many, came up, leaned on the roof and explained how they used to have a Morris Minor as well !

Within a few weeks of getting my first Minor home I remember going to a local classic car rally near where I live in Aberdeenshire,. I parked in the public car park, paying to go in and finding a group of around a dozen Morris Minors all together. Although Adam was not there, I was soon persuaded to go and fetch my new acquisition and join them. From that day on I was hooked, not only because of the practicality of the Minor but because of the fellow owners I met. Morris Minor owners I quickly discovered were a bit like the cars – generally great characters, no two the same, from all walks of life and sharing a passion for their cars.

Those that I met on that first outing were the first of just so many. Needless to say I was encouraged to join my local branch and within a few years I found myself on the committee. About 15 years ago I also became our branch secretary. You would probably think that as the secretary for Scotland North East Branch I would, especially by now have found my ideal Minor and more importantly have stuck with it . . . . . . so did I . . . . . but how wrong I was !!!

I sometimes wonder when I went down to just outside Cambridge with a car trailer to buy VSJ214 – did I really know what I was getting myself into ?

Rallies around the area followed and the weekend after the twin towers were demolished I threw caution to the wind and drove 350 miles south to the Jorvik rally in North Yorkshire. I vividly remember crossing the Forth Road Bridge & thinking . . . ."hope no one crashes into the bridge".

VSJ 214 was “alright” and it was definitely what I wanted to drive but I had a desire for something better and when I heard about a local car sprayer who had a Minor but was about to retire & emigrate I didn’t hesitate. NRS 861 was a black 2 door saloon with a 948cc engine. It was embarrassingly clean, mechanically perfect and the owner rarely took it out as he didn’t like it getting dirty.

With this one I went even further afield culminating in the 2004 JOGLE. Typically another event where I met so many other owner and several of them I am still in touch with nearly 17 years later. NRS 861 though presented no mechanical challenges so after just a couple of years was sold & replaced with a 1963 rose taupe 1098 4 door saloon which although tidy gave me enough to play with (starting with a new clutch! By June 2005 it was time for another JOGLE.
Within a couple more years boredom again set in and I bid blind on Ebay for a 1967 traveller which I had to collect from Pocklington. I remember when collecting it how easily it started but when I stopped at a shop a few miles away it refused to start again I checked everything and was about to call for help when after about 20 minutes it started. I quickly realised that when the engine was hot it would refuse to start which given that I was 350 miles from home was not good. The whole journey was completed in a day and on the two occasions when I stopped for petrol I simply had to leave the engine running.

Once back home I systematically replaced nearly all the electrics which I was convinced were the root cause of the problem . . . still no joy though, so as a last resort I took out the plugs . . . they looked new but were a brand I had never heard of. I put in old Champion ones that I had in stock and the problem was solved. We went all over in that tatty traveller and even had it resprayed before taking it on holiday up to Orkney and then on a Roses run.

Shortly after returning from a second Roses run a close friend in the club, Derek Benzie from Keith, (a town near Elgin) showed me his 1955 803cc Series II 4 door saloon LVY 165 – it looked absolutely fantastic and had never been welded. Despite the lack of power I did a deal with Derek & he took the Traveller in exchange. “Livy” as it affectionately became known was gutless but I was amazed at the things I saw at 40 mph that normally I would have missed.

One thing that had always amused me about Livy was it’s colour which was a shade darker on the inside. I then discovered that Derek had given the car to a local friend to respray and his friend had mixed the paint by eye! It also had awful wing mirrors and “Dalek” style rear indicator lights at the back. Knowing a local blacksmith I soon had the mirrors and “Dalek” style lights of Livy and the holes welded up before the car thankfully returned to full empire green glory with a good respray. I also reinstated the original trafficators.

Livy took few prizes but was simply a pleasure to drive until on a trip to a local rally over a long and steep incline called the Cairn ‘O Mount, the big end went – a spell in a local engineering workshop and normality resumed. Trips then to the borders for a Scottish branch rally where we picked up some silverware were followed by local rallies including one at Grantown on Spey which meant a trip over the infamous Lecht.

By the time I had owned Livy for another 3 years I had a camping holiday in Northumberland but a cylinder head problem meant the car being left with Chris at Tom Roys to sort. Collection a few weeks later coincided with a rally just outside Newcastle but on the way home the bottom half of the engine almost went into meltdown going through nearly a gallon of oil in just a little over 250 miles. This necessitated a full engine overhaul including a rebore and a new crankshaft. I can’t thank the MMOC and Bryan Gostling enough for the assistance he gave me with the NOS crankshaft and set of oversized pistons.

The transformation was absolutely remarkable and Livy then could occasionally even manage 50mph if it was going down hill with a tail wind. Trips to Orkney again, rallies all round Scotland and even two nationals at Scampston and Catton Hall provided fabulous memories. Catton hall at around 470 miles from home took just under 14 hours of driving – amusingly on the M6 which I would normally have avoided had for most of its length a 40mph limit in both directions so I was almost able to keep up with everyone else.

In all my 19 years of owning Morris Minors, my son Mark who actually learnt to drive in my first Minor and used it to commute to university always said I should get something with at least more power under the bonnet. Maybe this in 2016 was my reason for accepting an offer on Livy from Alan Bruce who was a member of our branch & who I knew had always wanted to buy the car.

Within a few months I had 908 RMM which had both a 1275cc MG engine and a very slick MG gearbox. It went like the proverbial clappers but was also unbearably noisy. A run to a classic car gathering at Glamis castle had my wife holding her fingers in her ears all the way home so after only 18 months that was also sold and in its place came my last Minor HUP 263J.

I had known about this car for many years as it had been brought up from the west country by an RAF helicopter pilot who restored it over about 4 or 5 year. It was a maroon 1098cc, 2 door saloon. This was immaculate like my black 2 door saloon but irritatingly had a differential rumble at over 50 mph. Having never replaced a broken differential I was actually surprised how simple it was. The refurbished replacement was a 3.9 ratio unit which made light work of cruising at 65 & 70 mph.