Sixty is not that old, but it is a milestone, most would probably agree. Reaching it should be marked with something, even if it’s just a trip to the pub. So, as today’s exactly sixty years since 15 August 1962, please raise a glass to the BMC ADO16 family, launched first as the Morris 1100 saloon, but later spawning the Morris 1300, Austin 1100 and 1300, MG 1100 and 1300, Riley Kestrel, Wolseley 1100 and 1300, Austin America, Vanden Plas Princess 1100 and 1300, and many other names around the world, in two door, four door and three door Traveller and Countryman forms.
It was a candidate for the most advanced compact car in the world at the time; it quickly became Britain’s best seller and went on to be Britain’s best selling car of the 1960s, taking almost 15% of the home market on its own. It was produced around the world under a complex range of brands and names, with some derivatives that existed only regionally or even nationally, and ultimately sold around 2.3 million copies in 13 years.
CC has looked at the car in depth before, so this piece is purely a celebration of the cars and their appeal, and their achievement. But a few highlights are worthy of repetition.
The design, at least the concept if not the detail execution, is credited to Sir Alec Issigonis (above, being used to promote the Riley Kestrel), perhaps the UK’s only ever celebrity car design engineer, and I have described it here as his masterpiece. It has most of what the Mini had, except more space, a decent boot and an accessible engine bay. One reason for this is that detail design was accomplished at the old Morris Motors design office at Cowley, rather than the Austin design office at Longbridge where Issigonis was based. Issigonis went to Cowley weekly; he prowled round Longbridge daily. The styling was by Pininfarina, the suspension was Hydrolastic and the engine was transversely mounted with the gearbox in the sump.
The official launch was on 15 August 1962, bang in the middle of the summer holiday season, and the magazines duly published the sort of in-depth new car feature we seldom see now.
How many people BMC expected to interrupt their holiday to read features like this from Autocar that week is not clear; in case you missed it at the time here it is again.
The first cars available were the Morris 1100, in two door and (more popular) four door saloon formats.
BMC and Pininfarina had a long standing relationship, so that the new car was styled by Pininfarina was no great surprise. There are several typical contemporary Pininfarina elements on the car – the grille and head lamp arrangement, the rear pillar, the flow along the side and the short stubby fins and rear light housings. Overall, it is usually accepted as a successful design that lasted pretty well too, especially in the basic model forms without a traditional grille added. The home market cost was £661, for a two door; a four door deluxe cost £695 (£9900 to £10500 adjusted).
Autocar got in very early for a road test, and even filtering for the loyalty and the rose tinted glasses, it does read as if the magazine was genuinely impressed. That standard was not, and sometimes still isn’t, always met.
The detailed specification data and dimensioned drawings are always instructive too.
The next version, which came in October 1962, was the MG 1100, which was also exported to North America. This is a 1965 model, spotted in Eugene, Oregon. It’s a personal opinion only, but the traditional grille does not work as well as one Pininfarina used.
In October 1963, the Austin version came to the market, as production now started at Longbridge as well as Cowley. By now, total production was over 5,000 cars a week
There was a different grille (crinkly not straight bars), no chrome bonnet strip and a different dash, with Issigonis’s preferred strip speedometer.
At the same time, the first Vanden Plas Princess 1100 was shown, later exported to the North America as the MG Princess. This was the full British wood and leather coach built interior experience, not a Ford Escort Ghia type dress up.
The Wolseley 1100 came in 1965, giving the UK’s former Nuffield Organization dealers a third brand to sell, alongside the Morris and MG versions. Austin dealers had just two – Austin and Vanden Plas. The Wolseley came with a traditional front end and a smarter, if conservative, interior, actually based on the dashboard with a strip speedometer, and with wood trim and leather, but not the Connolly leather, burr walnut trim and picnic tables reserved for the Princess.
At the same time the Riley Kestrel 1100 was launched, with a fuller instruments set than any other version, even the MG, and more chrome.
From top left – Austin Mk1, Morris Mk1, MG 1100, Wolseley 1100, Riley Kestrel, Vanden Plas Princess. Only the Riley had a rev counter; all but the Morris and Austin had wood of one sort or another. Automatic transmission, as an option, came in late 1965.
The first estate car, known as the Morris 11oo Traveller or Austin 1100 Countryman, was launched in 1966. This was only ever available as a three door car, and the interior was pretty flexible, up to offering a lumpy double bed. Issigonis and Dr Alex Moulton, the man behind Hydrolastic suspension, had intended that this car would have had an electrically powered rear self levelling system, but were over ruled by BMC’s accountants. This cutaway was generated for the London Motor Show and has, perhaps surprisingly, been preserved, and is now owned by one the ADO16 owners’ clubs.
This is a 1971 Morris 1300 Mk3 Traveller, and still carries some evidence of BMC’s fashion for fitting wood trim on the outside of estate cars.
Big change, relatively speaking, came in the spring of 1967, with the availability of a 1275cc engine on MG, Riley, Wolseley and Vanden Plas models. In October, the full range went to Mk2, with the option of 1100 or 1300 engines, reshaped rear fins and wider grilles on the Morris and Austin as the key giveaway. The Morris interior now matched the Austin.
And 1968 had a big change too – a fully synchromesh gearbox. This is a 1969 Morris 1100 Mk2, but even aficionados needed to check the badge and the grilles by now, and the car is now being built not by BMC but by British Leyland (BLMC). Not that that seemed to matter – the home market share for the ADO16 range was still close to 14%.
The Austin America replaced the MG1100 in the North American market in 1968, and featured a 1275cc engine with a modest 3bhp gain over the 1100 in the MG. Blame smog controls, I guess. A four speed manual or four speed automatic were offered but in either case performance was slow, to say the least. Sales lasted until 1971; a total of 60,000 were sold but survivors seem to be rare.
By this time, BL were taking a fairly ruthless view of the old marques that had been inherited from BMC. Riley production ended in 1969; the last Riley of all was a 1300 saloon, the four door MG versions were discontinued in 1969 as well. It was also becoming clear that the Morris and Austin brands would no longer be paired in the same way in BL’s future model plans.
As the Riley and MG four door went, a new higher image version came in – the Austin and Morris 1300GT in four door saloon form.
A black grille, a black dash with a full instrument set very similar to the discontinued Riley, vinyl roof, sports wheels, and an alloy steering wheel and sports seat matched with a 70bhp 1275cc engine made a pretty effective Riley 1300 replacement and competitor for the Ford Escort GT, and a step more modern in image than the MG1300 or the Riley. Strong contemporary colours and some strong marketing images added to the effect.
The blue car above is a 1972 Austin 1300GT; the green(?) one behind is a 1971 Morris 1300 Mk3.
The Mk3 came in September 1971, making this Morris a very early example, and rare in the UK. The main changes were another new grille (the 3 bar design for the 1300, one bar for the 1100), new wheel trims and new colours.
Inside, there was a new dash based on a more contemporary look but still with mock timber. The 1300GT and Wolseley retained their earlier interiors There was some more range and brand pruning, so no more (home market) MG versions. The estates carried on, but still only on the everyday brands of Morris and Austin.
In October 1971, home market sales of the Morris 1100 and 1300 saloons ended, as the Morris Marina came on stream, and with it UK production of Morris cars blessed by the chap whose name was on the bonnet.
The Mk3 was the last home market development for the ADO16; Wolseley production ended in the spring of 1973 UK production. Austin and Vanden Plas production ended in June 1974, with around 2.25 million built, and replaced by the Austin Allegro.
But the ADO16 had some interesting overseas adventures.
The first of these was with Innocenti in Italy, BMC’s established licence building partner based in Milan. As early as the spring of 1963, Innocenti were building the Innocenti IM3 (Innocenti Morris).
Interestingly, Innocenti managed by the expedient of an additional universal joint, to achieve a more upright steering wheel, alleviating some of the “bus driver” driving position. Alongside this, a revised front grille and very different interior created a different feel to the car, perhaps even an Italian one.
The Im3 evolved to the IM3S with minor styling changes, and there was also an Austin I4, with fewer styling changes sold at a slightly lower price point. The IM3S ran to 1970; the Austin I4 and the facelifted I5 ran to 1974, and were replaced by the Allegro based Regent, of which the less said the better.
But BMC’s best and strongest export markets were often in the British Commonwealth, and the ADO16 was no real exception.
Australian production started in 1964, from CKD kits with some variations, notably a bench front seat. The range was similar to the UK market, and development matched it, with a 1275cc engine and automatic option in 1967. But Australia is different to the UK, despite the language and the cricket, and the market needed more.
In June 1969, Leyland Australia started production of the Morris Nomad – an intriguing selection from the BLMC parts bin.
It was a hatchback derivative of the four door ADO16, with a hatchback that looked very similar but was different to that on the contemporary Austin Maxi, and the Maxi’s E series 1500cc engine.
Alongside the Nomad, Leyland Australia also offered the Morris 1500 saloon, a derivative of the existing saloon body but with the Maxi’s 1500 engine and later the five speed transmission as well. Notice the raised bonnet with a bulge unique to the 1500 and Nomad, and different door handles (and door skins) from the UK built cars. In all, around 29,000 cars were built before it was replaced by a locally built Morris Marina, but it was not sold outside Australasia.
Production in New Zealand, again using CKD kits shipped from the UK, continued until 1975, as evidenced by this Austin 1300 Mk3 (with an 1100 spec grille) I saw a few years ago, in a very period colour.
Perhaps more typical is this 1971 Morris 1100 Mk2, albeit with an aftermarket set of cobra stripes
South Africa and Spain may seem an unlikely pairing, but under BL they shared a version of the ADO16 known as the Austin Apache and the Austin Victoria, with new nose and tail profiles designed by Michelotti. Michelotti was of course Triumph’s preferred stylist, having been behind all the Triumph range since the late 1950s, and Triumph’s Harry Webster was now in charge of Austin-Morris division’s engineering.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new front and rear profiles were very Triumph like, such that you could suspect the origin of the car. But once you spot the ADO16 central section, from A pillar to C pillar, you cannot un-see it. Still it was a professional looking adaptation. One take on these cars is that the style was rejected replacement for the ADO16, known as the ADO22, but little seems to formally confirm that.
The South African Austin Apache came first, in late 1971. Production lasted to 1977, when again the Marina replaced it.
The Austin Victoria, produced by Authi, BLMC’s Spanish affiliate, was visually and technically very close to the Apache. You have to admit that that four lamp layout just adds to the Triumph feel of the car, as well as the black C pillar.
More Triumph vibes, I suggest. Is that why this design was rejected for ADO22, which never actually came to pass anyway?
Power for both came from the 1275cc engine with the regular ADO16 four speed transmission. Victoria production ended in 1974, after a fire at the factory effectively ended Authi production. There was also production in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and in Central and South America as well.
The ADO16 is now a little overlooked, with relatively few appearing in the classic community and at shows, compared to say the Morris Minor, Mini, or MGB. That is disproportionate with its abilities and the achievement in bringing it to market, its market success and engineering influence, and the regularity with which it features in family photo albums and memories, but maybe is a consequence of its familiarity.
I have said here before that this car was a more than worthy successor to the Minor and Morris Eight, and it was the last unambiguously technically and commercially successful solo effort in the family car market from BMC and BLMC. I nominated it on CC as the most influential car of the 1960s – I suggest you could nominate it for comparison with, not just the Minor, but the Fiat 128, Renault 5 and 16, VW Golf and Ford Focus Mk1 as a truly influential European family market car.
So, thank you ADO16, and Happy Birthday. I’ll be raising a glass to you today!
ADO16 on CC
Curbside Classic: 1965 MG1100 (ADO16) – BMC’s Greatest Hit
CCOTY 1962 Nomination #2: Austin 1100 Family (BMC ADO16) – The Template For The Modern Small Car
Cohort Outtake: Vanden Plas Princess 1100 – When Status Came In Small Packages
Curbside Classic: 1969 Riley 1300 Mk2 – Once, One Car In Seven Was Like This
Cohort Classic: 1966 Vanden Plas Princess 1100 – Peak Issigonis, With Added Contradictions
CC Outtake: 1975 Austin 1300 MK3 – Please Do Not Adjust Your Set
COAL: 1968 MG 1300 — A Driving Interregnum
Curbside Classic Outtake: 1960/70’s Vanden Plas Princess 1100/1300 – The Real Anglophile
Cohort Outtake: Austin America – What This Country Doesn’t Need Is Just Another Small British Car
QOTD: Advertising Outtake: How To Sell A BMC 1100 Across The World – Which One Works?
Turkey Day Classic: 1968-1972 Austin America – Yankee Doodle Disaster
Lovely overview of the car. The last thing BMC/BL ever did right.
Now on to re-digging thru all the other previous articles.
Definitely a good reason to raise a glass today. As I’ve mentioned before, I went to school in Britain for a couple of years in the mid/late 1960s, and can vouch for the 14% market share. These cars were everywhere, and as an occasional hitchhiker I rode in them fairly often.
I too think they were the most successful of the basic Issigonis concept from all standpoints – size, packaging, practicality, styling. Clearly they hit me at an impressionable age, but I still think the Morris/Austin versions are among the most attractive cars of their era. They combine Pininfarina’s elegant design instincts with a slightly quirky Britishness.
They were driven far more aggressively on winding country B-roads than their looks might suggest in 2022, and their ride and handling characteristics were impressive for the time. In the hands of an enthusiastic driver, and on the admittedly much slower roads, they could be screamers. 🙂
They were demonstrably the right car in the right place at the right time.
Happy Birthday, ADO16!
The Austin/Morris versions had such agreeable, innocent faces. Which makes this famous Fawlty Towers clip even funnier.
Brilliant engineering, terrible rustproofing and the replacement was the Allegro. These were best sellers when new and actually made a profit, unlike the Mini.
Very comprehensive – thank you, Roger. I’ve one more to add – the Pedestrian Catcher version (the browny-beige car [Harvest Gold?] in this short newsreel). Being a popular car, it starred in many British public information films, as I recall.
These were great, but perhaps before their time. I wonder if the big interior cleverly grafted into the small body calls to mind a little too much austerity to go with the new set of car payments to a potential buyer. It probably depends whether the buyer was coming from a same size interior previous car or a more cramped same size body. Wilson era Britain was probably a good place for them.
In the US, where the Mini was really a novelty, the technology and packaging of these cars was very distinctive in a more usable family size. Though that didn’t translate into sales success. I was rather surprised when after just five years our neighbor replaced her B18 Volvo 544 with a new Austin America, with the manual transmission. But it didn’t last very long, and her son passed down his TR3 to his mother; she drove the TR3, which I think actually pre-dated the Volvo, right up until she quit driving in the 1980’s. Thanks Roger for a thorough history, and especially for showing the Apache and Victoria versions which I was unaware of.
These did not do well in the United States at all. They would rust fiercely where roads were salted in winter and the automatic transmissions would usually fail by the time the cars were a few years old, landing the cars in the scrapyard. (Sharing the engine oil with the transmission saved space but wasn’t really good for either, especially with Americans’ typical indifference to maintenance. Then there was the deflating suspension. For a few years you’d see Austin Americas around, then they were gone.
In contrast the VW bug was obsolete but it (mostly) just kept running and had an excellent dealer network providing parts and service, and of course the Japanese started making inroads with cars designed with the U.S. market in mind. The Austin America never really stood a chance here.
The best car memories from my childhood. We had three 1100s and a 1500 among my uncles and aunts.
Absolutely brilliant cars, from a passenger’s point of view. Amazing amount of space, and an incredibly smooth ride. The 1500 finally gave the chassis the power it always cried out for, but was compromised by a dreadful 5 speed gearbox. Serviceability, well, we won’t go there… Counting against the 1500 was that it looked so old fashioned by 1971; the Apache/Victoria was the way to go for an update. But…..
I’ve often wondered how the car might have developed under better management. Suppose a company like Ford UK was managing things; how might they have developed this? And would Issigonis have been a better fit working for, say, Citroen?
Interestingly, Australian production cars lacked that little triangular trim piece at the base of the rear quarter window, ours just had triangular glass. When the Morris was released here, two years after its UK debut, a magazine took one through the outback and listed 40 (or was it 50?) changes made to the Australian car, mostly related to strengthening and dustproofing. I think that quarter window change was the only visible one, and I’ve often wondered why they bothered. I’ll go and hunt up the article, if anyone’s interested.
I’d like to see that!
Magazine staffers accompanied the test drivers, and wrote up a four page report. Cheap paper has browned with age, and they seemed to use sepia ink (?), or else its browned too. Here’s the full story. I hope it’s legible.
Page 1
p2
p3.
p4.
Thanks for the effort. Page 4 is legible; the other three are too blurry to make out any words.
Those window corner pieces were dropped on the home market Mk3. Personally, they make me think someone wanted to do opening rear quarter lights, as they match the front quarter light corner piece but I’ll guess we’ll never know.
Did the Australian glass makers just point that a triangle is an easier shape to make
Great minds think alike, Rog! My pean to ADO16 (the VdP 1300 variant, to be precise) will be up in a couple of days, but this superbly detailed overview of the entire breed, in all its complexity, is a most fitting birthday gift from CC to the venerable ADO16.
Prosit, kampai and sláinte! Here’s to the best thing BMC ever did.
Yes they were popular in NZ but a nearby dealer was a requirement to keep one running properly, Ive driven a GT version it actually went quite well it was an unwanted tradein used as a runabout,
Over the last few weeks a Wolseley 1300 Traveller has appeared its for sale on Facebook now fully road legal for $4500 its a model Ive never seen and didnt even know they made or its a backyard job anyway it looks ok tidy etc. no I dont want it I have one British estate car already.
There were never anything other Austin and Morris estates in the UK and I have not heard of export markets having anything beyond those either, so I suspect a Wolseley Traveller would be an aftermarket conversion, by adding a grille, leather seats and a different dash. But this is CC, and someone may different and better
A nicely done retrospective! This is a car that I never had one whit of exposure to, beyond a Corgi toy. And it is true in the US too – the cars in all of our family photos almost never show up at car shows.
Cheers Roger, and a great write-up!
BMC is still very much alive and kicking. Well, the Turkish truck manufacturer anyway. BMC Turkey was formed in 1964 in partnership with the British Motor Corporation.
And the factory in Izmir (then Smyrna) was opened by Alec Issigonis, a native of the city
Even better!
Thanks for the retrospective. A brilliant design, and very influential, even if it took some time for its basic concept to be improved upon.
I’ll take that Innocenti, with that Italian interior and revised steering column angle. Very lovely, unlike those ghastly Triumphized versions.
Several years ago there was an orange Austin America with (presumably not stock) black vinyl roof on the 8500 block of 17th Ave. NW in Seattle. Unfortunately I didn’t think to photograph it for the Cohort. Does anyone else here know this car?
I do recall these cars a bit, but not too much and never drove one. One thing that jumped out at me was the price. If I’m interpreting it correctly, and I might not be, it appears retail was in the neighborhood of $1900 USD. Around 1970 I recall VW bug ads for a list of $1839. Now the FWD BMC may have had more room inside, and trunk, smaller on the outside, compared to the Beetle, which is significant, but really far less car in terms of reliability and longevity. Not to mention what my research (some, but limited) a significantly higher price than it’s German competitor.
Love these. My father had two – one of the first Morris 1100s, which he exported immediately to France and which shocked him with the lack of teething problems for a brand new model. That got crushed in an accident by a lorry (and my father said he would have died had it been a left hand drive car). Then some years later a Wolseley 1100 that was sold immediately after I was born as a pushchair wouldn’t fit in the boot. And in the mid 70s our opposite neighbour had a bumperless Austin America in various shades of blue – he said he learned to love British cars while stationed in Hawaii. His wife had an early 70s Impala and 5 year old me always found the sight of ‘little and large’ parked on their driveway very funny. My father thought a 1300 would be a good first car for me but by 1988 the prices of Vanden-Plas – which tended to survive as they were better-maintained- were already sky high because of the Japanese export market and ‘normal’ ones full of rust so we gave up that search.
Isn’t their Giovanni Michelotti facelift that was a Hatchback, that looked better than the Allegro ?
***
Only ADO16 we had was in a Black, that was Green. He installed the Red Leather / leatherette interior from an MG or Riley into it.
Mum hated Green.
Summer of 1976, she left it parked on the driveway.
I was 5 and in shorts. I got in, and I screamed as the Hot seat cover bonded to my skin.
It took a week for the scald to fade.
I think it was the suspension starting to sag, and no-one would pay for a BL dealer to sort that out, that made Dad get shut of it, but she really did hate Green.
But that sums up BMC. Building Alec Issigonis wacky designs, but not having trained the dealers how to maintain them.
Supposedly in the Issigonis bio by Jonathan Wood, the original plan for ADO16 and ADO17 was to feature an end-on gearbox by essentially building upon developments from an earlier pre-Alvis FWD Morris Minor project.
However the aftermath of the Suez crisis and prioritization of the Mini as well as expediency of having all three FWD cars use the in-sump gearbox, led to the BMC later BL being limited by the in-sump design until the 1982 Maestro.
Although between the initial end-on plan and in-sump production, there was also the diversion of the V4/V6 engines where the ADO16 and ADO17 were to use a longitudinal FWD arrangement.
IMHO the Innocenti I5 looks the most modern at the front, while ADO16 as a whole would have benefited from a hatchback like the Mystique conversion as well as an Tasman/Kimberley X6 type three-box saloon rear (in place of the Apache/Victoria).
Also would have to say that Pininfarina’s proposals for the pre-Golf Volkwagen EA235 B and B1 represent to my mind what ADO22 could have been in better circumstances as opposed to other replacement schemes.
Pininfarina model for the EA 235 B
https://i.imgur.com/1PcIgnf.png