KEEPERS
From humble origins as a load carrier this plucky pick-up is still here more than 50 years later following a full nut-and-bolt restoration and now winning concours trophies by the score
My love of all things Morris Minor goes back a long way, having spent 55 years in the motor trade – and the last 26 restoring classic cars – so its safe to say that the passion is in my blood. No stranger to Minors, my wife and I already own a modifi ed concours soft-top, which I lovingly restored a number of years ago and is very well known in Minor circles today.
‘I hadn’t specifi cally set out to restore another but many things happen by means of a passing comment and my wife had just remarked to me that it would be nice for us to restore one together. To that end we decided to look for another Minor to restore from the ground up and it was decided early on that we should do one that was just a little bit di_ erent and rarer than the norm.
‘Pick-ups are very thin on the ground today but the 1968-1971 Austin-badged variants are scarcer-still. BMC/British Leyland were masters of the art of badgeengineering and catered for both member) and their Morris and Austin customersby o_ ering the same product – in this case the Austin version di_ ered only in terms of badging and having the traditional Austin trademark grille treatment.
‘As is often the case the rarest of cars sometimes turn up on your doorstep and I learned that one such Austin example lay languishing in a farm yard some six miles away owned by people known to my family. I pestered them to let me buy it and they eventually relented and settled on a very reasonable sum – we’d found our together restoration project!‘
‘It was clear from the outset that it needed everything doing to it so we decided that a full nut-and-bolt job, right down to the chassis, was the only way to go: Unlike their monocoque saloon stablemates, these have a separate chassis in order to be more work-rugged.
‘Fortunately, Minor spares are relatively easy to come by thanks to the various thriving owners’ clubs (a few of which I am a a member) and various specialists. Items specifi c to the pick-up can be challenging, though, none more so than the original rubber fl oor covering, which almost impossible to obtain now. However a contact in Ireland came up trumps with a new-old stock one and it really was the restoration’s fi nishing touch.
‘The build turned into an 11-year love a_ air, although it wasn't without its challenges, which held it up a good bit. Covid must have held up everybody’s restoration projects but I also had a major health scare about halfway through the build that put everything into perspective and made me realise that we really must try to live each day to the full.
‘We pushed on with the resto once I had recovered and saw it through to successful completion wi
