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MAN AND MACHINE
Three cheers for Eight
PRINCE FREDERICK
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As it matched style with efficiency, the Morris Eight was a sell-out
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Taking a leaf out of Ford’s book, the Morris Motor Company designed Morris Eight. The Ford Model Y had been a huge success; Morris Eight’s design was based on this popular Ford. It turned out to be a great move — aided largely by the gains from the Morris Eight, between 1935 and 1948, the British company seized an unassailable position among automobile makers in the country. The volume of Morris’ sales was mind-boggling. Sales of the three Eight models put together (Series I, Series II and Series E) touched about 3.4 lakh cars.
Differences between Series I and II were of a minor nature. While the older model had wired spoke wheels and plated honeycomb dummy grille, the newer one had disc wheels and a painted grille. It did not come as a surprise that the Series II lasted just a year. It took the design of the Series E to convey to the world, Morris’ determination to create a totally new-looking Eight that meshed with changed public preferences.
The running boards, a conspicuous feature of Series I and II, were gone. The new dummy grille conjured up the image of a rushing waterfall and not a honeycomb. All three Eight models had a side-valve, 918 cc engine — the one for the ‘E’ received a new cylinder head. Thanks to this, the Series E was more powerful than its predecessors. The four-speed transmission was another improvement — the earlier models came with a three-speed.
Besides the major ones, fiddly little design changes such as the rear-hinged bonnet make the Series E markedly different from the other two Eights.
Even among the Series E cars, there is a division — those before the War and those after. In the early Es, the headlamps were sunken into the wings — this feature imparted the car a superficial likeness to the Volkswagen Beetle. After the War, the position of the headlamps and the shape of the wings underwent changes. Post-War E headlamps managed a greater throw of light.
When the Eight was taken off the assembly line, Morris Motor Company could congratulate itself for having made a car that matched style with efficiency.
To acquire a vintage vehicle, even a dilapidated one, a huge sum has to be coughed up. R. Srinivasan can count himself lucky that the old car bug bit him at a time when commersialisation of vintage vehicles was not of the scale witnessed today. In 1999, he bought a 1948 Morris Eight E for what now seems a ridiculously low price. This Eight had been in disuse for over a decade, but had all of its original components.
Srinivasan had to just carry out repairs on these parts; rusty and jammed up due to lack of action.
The dashboard speaks eloquently of the car’s unbroken link with the past. There is a switch and a knob to operate the windscreen wiper — the switch operates the wiper electrically and the knob is used to move it manually. The three-in-one fuel, oil and ampere meter is in fine working condition; so are the speedometer and the semaphore indicators.
“I was saved the trouble of scouting around for parts. The only significant change I effected was the car’s colour. It was all-black and I painted it black and green — after some research.”
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