African Queen

A 1500-mile road trip has retraced this Morris Minor's history, from its first owner to its rediscovered remains, 54 years ago

- GRAEME HURST

Knowing the history of a car adds a certain charm and authenticity to the ownership experience. While keys often change hands with a file of MOTs and receipts, details of past keepers can be more tricky to establish. Especially when the car is 94 years old and from another continent. Except in the case of Peter Hills' 1929 Morris Minor, which originally appeared in the September 1993 issue of C&SC.

Acquired as an abandoned wreck in rural Zambia in 1970, its ownership can be traced back through 10 previous keepers, all the way to when it was delivered new to neighbouring Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) as the first Morris in the land. And not just names, either: Peter has formed a list of all 11 addresses where the car was kept during its lifetime.

That's one more than the number of owners, because the last one, in Itimpi - a small village outside the city of Kitwe in northern Zambia is the key to this little product of Nuffield's endearing history. It's where now 79-year-old Peter snapped a photograph of the Morris in early May last year: on the exact spot where he'd scooped up the seriously rusty remains of the four-seater tourer 54 years earlier, then aged 26 and living in Zambia. The subject of an impressive, first-principles restoration over the following two decades, the little Morris which has been registered in the UK since the early 1990s - was back on the patch of African soil where Peter's ownership story began.