Page 19 - MM_Sep Oct 2021

ABOVE RIGHT:
A prototype of the Minor Traveller was built in 1951, based on the ‘short bonnet’ MM saloon body with a side-valve engine. This survived into private ownership and was last heard of many years ago in Scotland where these photographs were probably taken
Photos: Sandy Hamilton
to Wadhams in the UK on January 8, 1954 but was not registered until April. My Birch Grey one, now PPO 924, from the first production run was one of the first export batch of 12 Birch Grey and Clarendon Grey Travellers and, surprisingly, it went to Malta.
Many years ago, I spent a day with Anders Clausager, then archivist, at Gaydon Motor Museum transcribing the production records for the 1953 Travellers. Subsequent analysis of these records showed that 296 Travellers were built in 1953 of which 45% went to Nuffield Exports for delivery to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and various other overseas destinations. Of these 73 were left-hand drive and most of the export models (85%) were of deluxe specification. The early Travellers were available in four colours, Black, Clarendon Grey, Birch Grey and Empire Green. The allocation of these colours was fairly evenly split between home market and export models except for those in black where only 20% were exported.
Each Traveller body was given a body number starting from BMD 501 but they were not built up in chronological order. For example, BMD 501 was allocated chassis number 216951.
The Series II Traveller followed a year after the launch of the Morris Oxford MO Traveller and was intended as a traveller’s car in the UK market. Actual use as a travelling salesman’s car was borne out by a former colleague telling me in the 1980s that, as a young agricultural sales rep in the
1950s he had a split screen Traveller.
For the first year the Traveller body-style followed the
rest of the current Series II range with a cheesegrater grille, the early style dash inherited from the Series MM with
the frontal arrangement and cab area based on the two- door body shell. The steel bodyshell was manufactured
at Nuffield Metal Products in Birmingham and the handmade ash timber frame with aluminium panels was assembled separately at the Morris Bodies factory
at Quinton Road, Coventry. Here for a short time, it was fitted to the steel shell and the complete Traveller was assembled. Initially the wooden frame was of a different design to later Travellers with the B-post, lower rail and wheel arch front section being different something that resulted in a lot of wasted timber. This was changed to the more familiar later style sometime in January 1954. There are only a few vehicles left with the original design of woodwork.
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