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A Dream that Came True!
by Mike Thorne, a member of The Ferguson Club
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bout 30 years ago, I dreamt that I had bought and restored a Morris 1000 pick-up and painted it in my firm’s colour of BMC Lime Flower Green.
I should explain that a few months after my 21st birthday, in 1959, I bought a brand new Morris 1000 Pick-up, XXM 572, from Henley’s of North London for the sum of £370-0-0 plus £7-10-0 for the passenger sea. It was pretty basic, no heater and no form of directional indication. The day I drove it home, my father left the family! This little Morris served me well, clocking up 187,000 miles before it was scrapped. To achieve this, it required 3 Gold Seal engine and gearboxes. (Gold Seal was BMC’s trade name for it’s rebuilt power and transmission units) During the course of it’s life, the chassis had to be replaced; the commercial Morris 1000, unlike the passenger models, had a separate chassis. On waking, I felt, well that is a good idea. So, that is exactly what I proceeded to do! I soon found that there was a sad looking 1968 Morris 1000 Pick-up in a barn at
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the nearby village of Winkleigh. I approached the owner, who had used it in connection with his forestry work, and he seemed very keen that I should buy it for renovation. I cannot remember how much I paid for it – if anything! Anyway, my long-standing friend, Robin Haughton, and I soon had it back home at my workshop at Lower Park, home of my Coldridge Collection and work commenced. We took off all the mechanical units, this was followed by removing the doors and body panels, leaving just the chassis. As Robin and I picked up either end, with the intention of putting it into the scrap metal skip, it folded in half! The next stage of this project was to make a preliminary list of replacement parts required. At this time, there was a firm by the name of Hendrix of Nottingham who specialised in Morris 1000 parts and they were able to supply a replacement chassis, fabricated using thicker steel than the original! They were also able to supply a pair of front wings, repair parts for the door bottoms, inner rear wheel arches but sadly not the outer repair kit. Fortunately, Robin’s skills overcame this problem! The
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