Page 11 - MM_Sep Oct 2021

Austin 8cwt pick-up
MMOC member Tony Shaw
gave me a copy of your excellent magazine in one of our ‘mag swap’ meetings and I was taken back years to my Morris 1000 days.
Actually they were Austin 8cwt pick-up days. In 1971 I was on the lookout for replacement/upgrade for my Mini pick-up that was my daily user to support my fledgling washing up liquid business. I needed something bigger but suitable as
a car too. While on holiday in
Edinburgh I saw a beautiful Austin
A55 pickup in corporation green
livery with city crests on the doors.
On returning home to Leicester, I
consulted my local Austin dealer,
Evington Garage, about the
possibility of getting me a new truck. Alas I was a year or two too late but, “How about an Austin 8cwt - Moggy 1000 to you mate - that’s if we can find one?”
I agreed. A few days later it was I who found one, in bright red on
the forecourt of an Austin dealer in Birmingham. I told my friendly salesman Bill Dossor to get the truck over here ASAP. A few days later
I was the proud owner of BBC 20K. I had a grey tonneau cover made, mounted the spare on the tailgate and got my body shop pal to put gold pinstripes down it. I also invested in a Motolita leather and aluminium steering wheel from Bob Gerard’s go faster shop in town. On my first
day at the wheel I was hooted and sworn at by several motorists much
to my dismay until someone asked me why I indicated right and turned left! For the rest of the day I trained myself to wink right and turn left etc. A slip-up by the PDI mechanic I guess, not to mention the production line guy at Longbridge, or was it Ward End? I gave that steering wheel to Tony Shaw recently for his Morris 1000 convertible.
Having sold the Mini truck I loaded the 8cwt job with 100 one gallon bottles of washing up liquid and put another 50 in the trailer, that’s about 13cwt, it makes me cringe 50 years later. Generally on the flat the gutsy little motor coped well but I found its limit on the A429 Fosse Way at
Fosse Bridge where there was set of lights at the bottom of a hill.
The first time I started from the red lights I soon ground to halt
as gravity took hold. It took me ages to roll back down safely with the trailer and find an alternative route. In future I would stop on the downward slope and wait for the lights to turn green, then charge across and storm the hill and on to my customer at Bristol.
The brakes, clutch and tyres didn’t last long with this abuse but the little Austin did me proud. It
was a quirky little beast that hopped round corners under power when unladen and froze my right foot on long winter journeys as I pivoted my throttle foot on the raw inner wing. I could contort my feet to get my left foot over to the throttle for short periods for respite.
Bill had told me that there was a Marina pickup on the way as the estate toolkit box had ‘estate, van and p/up’ printed on it. I would have liked something a bit bigger, say an 1800 Landcrab pick-up but that never happened. Sometime in late 1973 I saw a canary yellow pickup being offloaded outside a Mazda dealer. I doubled back and did a deal there and then for a Mazda B1600. I bought four of these in the 1970s. It was another big mistake by BL in letting this market sector slip away.
Before parting with the Austin pick-up I tried to sell the vehicle to the BBC on the grounds of its number BBC 2 0K but the frosty transport manager at the other end of the phone said, “Oh no, we don’t go in for that sort of thing at the BBC.”
As we all do, I wonder if it’s still around, anyone know? I enclose a few photos to illustrate the yarn including a honeymoon shot in May 1973, coincidently not far from the scene of the hillstart escapade.
Franklin Woodcock
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 MINOR MATTERS | 11