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`He was furious. He called it a poached egg, and everything under the sun, and walked out'. I wasn't there at the meeting, in fact I only met him twice in my life. The second time was eleven years later, when we'd made a million Morris Minors. Then he had the grace to thank me - Sir Alec Issigonis describing Lord Nuffields reaction to being shown the Morris Minor.
A Minor (Major) Hitch
With the last design and production hurdles overcome, the Morris Minor had finally `grown up' and was ready to leave the nest. It was without doubt an astonishing package for 1947, and was almost certainly the most advanced small car in Europe, possibly the world, at that time. It was brilliantly effective for its size, possessed almost unheard of standards of road holding and handling, yet was basically simple and cheap to make. It may come as something of a shock therefore, that there was considerable doubt that the Morris Minor would ever enter production. Unfortunately neither the Morris Minor or Issigonis enjoyed the confidence of the senior management, specifically, Lord Nuffield - a staunch traditionalist. Lord Nuffield argued that they had more orders for the Morris Eight than they could cope with, so what was the point of putting the Morris Minor on the market. The counter argument that the Morris Minor would give Morris a commanding lead, did little to reduce Lord Nuffields antagonism for the Morris Minor. In fact it took more than another year and a change of managing director (no longer able to tolerate the situation Miles Thomas left Morris Motors and was later replaced by Reginald Hanks - fortunately another strong supporter of the Morris Minor) before the Morris Minor was finally released to market in October 1948. As a final insult, at the official launch of the Morris Minor, Lord Nuffield refused even to drive the new car for publicity purposes.
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All text and some images are © Kris Bubendorfer 1996, and the text may be freely copied and republished in any form on the condition the source is acknowledged.