Wartime Morris Cars and Utes

[Bill Kreiner]

David kindly sent me more of the Gaydon sheets on British makes. In looking at the Cowley (Morris) sheet, I was reminded of a letter I'd gotten from the late, great Harry Edwards (Morris historian par excellence), in reply to questions I'd asked about the wartime production of passenger cars and utilities.

I found the letter, scanned it in, and attached the two pages here, in case anyone here is interested. Morris Eight passenger cars were built until 1941. Morris Ten saloons were built during 1940, until the Ten Utility took over late in the year.

Harry quotes the contract numbers and dates of the utes, which differ a bit from those quoted by Bart Vanderveen in his excellent Morris Tilly article in Wheels & Tracks.

Hope someone finds it useful! It certainly is to me, since I'm attempting to research passenger-car (and derivative vehicle) production and deliveries (no matter whom the recipients were) for the war years for all makes of cars around the world.

[Bill Kreiner]

Attached here is an ad of a 1940 Morris Ten wartime passenger car, also sent by Harry.

[Mike Kelly]

Brand new Morris Tilly offered for sale in QLD. The TROVE newspaper reports indicate that 1200 tillies, Morris, Austin, Standard and Hillman, were to be landed in Australia in 1945. I would think the actual number of tillies that got here would be around 200 or less, this estimate is a rough figure based on the number of survivors. I have only ever known of one Austin (in QLD) , maybe ten Morris and maybe two Hillmans. The Standards are the most numerous survivors with around 20-30. If there were 1200 landed , then you would think there should be many more of them around - unless a rough farm life took its toll on these little cars and they fell to pieces. TROVE newspaper reports should be looked upon with a 'grain of salt' as the saying goes.

The govt. may have ordered 1200 tillies (for essential use) , then realized, with the large amount of surplus vehicles about to be released by the CDC , they decided to amend the order and reduce the number of tillies imported ?

It appears that some dealerships were allocated as few as two or three tillies to sell to local farmers who could obtain the correct permit. The tilly adverts are spread Australia wide from Tasmania across to Perth W.A. and were from the mid to late 1945 time zone, the adverts disappear around Nov. 1945.

A Lismore NSW dealership had only one new tilly for sale.