LATERAL THINKING

Celebrating BMC's badge-engineered AD016 and its transverse power unit, 60 years after it took the British small family car market by storm

- ANDREW ROBERTS

On 15 August 1962, a major new product was launched by the British Motor Corporation. The Morris 1100 is a prime example of the right model offered at the right time, and it more than fulfilled the brochure's bold claims of 'fresh, progressive and exciting thinking. The Motor predicted that if it did not sell in phenomenal numbers then a lot of people would be eating their hats - and, sure enough, the ADO16 family became the country's best-selling car for many years. It was also the first BMC product fitted with Hydrolastic suspension and, above all, it captured the zeitgeist of the early '60s as much as The Beatles' Love Me Do or the BBC's That Was The Week That Was.

Such an important product - for the ADO16 could be one of Britain's most significant postwar cars - merited a special 60th-anniversary celebration, so C&SC invited eight examples to the Cowley plant, the home of the BMC 1100 and 1300. Each represents a different aspect of a narrative that encompasses automotive genius, corporate in-fighting, and, frequently, confusing marketing. And each, in its own fashion, demonstrates why the Austin, MG, Morris, Riley, Vanden Plas, Riley, and Wolseley were once encountered on virtually every high street.

Familiarity with a vehicle can sometimes blind us to its significance, and when encountering William Davies' 1963 Morris 1100 it is difficult not to indulge in Jonathan Meades-style prose. Almost every detail evokes countless memories, from the Pininfarina styling to the flashing indicator stalk and an engine note familiar from several dozen public information films. Yet those first 1100s were virtually unique in the market, with front-wheel drive, a transverse A-series motor, and engineer Alex Moulton's pioneering interconnected-fluid suspension. In the words of Motor Sport, it was set to: 'Slaughter all rival small cars, both British and Continental.'