BMC BREAKTHROUGH - AUSTIN 1100 - ALEX MOULTON
Designed by Sir Alec Issigonis and styled by the Italian masters Pininfarina, the British Motor Corporation (BMC) 1100 was Britain’s best-selling car throughout the 1960s. We all remember the Mini, but in reality its big brother the 1100 was more successful and (whisper it) a better all-round motor than the Mini was - and Alex Moulton was never shy of admitting this, perhaps not surprisingly as the 1100 was the first car to feature Moulton’s ‘Hydrolastic’ interconnected suspension system.
The 1100 - first launched in 1962 wearing Morris badges - gained from experience hard-won following the introduction of the Mini with its ground-breaking front wheel drive and Issigonis ‘gearbox in sump’ transmission, and was all the better for it. It was also less constrained by Issigonis’ own, often arbitrary, design targets.
Alec Issigonis told Basil Cardew of the Daily Express: ‘We have tried to produce a good looking, functional car – while cutting out as far as possible the risk of things going wrong. My main plan was to design a motorcar to travel as efficiently as possible from A to B, with full comfort over really rough roads. The world will decide whether we have succeeded’ BMC were soon building in excess of 5,000 each week and factories in over ten countries built 1100s - evidently Issigonis and his team had designed a world-beater.
BMC produced two short films to showcase the unique qualities of the 1100, based around a newspaper reporter researching how different owners were using their new 1100s. These films are full of interesting material including interviews with Alec Issigonis, John Cooper, Christabel Carlisle, a very young-looking Paddy Hopkirk and Basil Cardew himself. Of particular interest to us is the short interview with Alex Moulton in the Oak Room at The Hall, then the location of the Moulton Museum and apparently haunted. John Cooper describes and demonstrates some of the features of the Moulton Hydrolastic suspension fitted to his Cooper Junior racing cars - “the ride is like a Cadillac, until you turn left or right and then it’s like a Grand Prix car”. There are also some fascinating glimpses of 1960s life, from the high streets to new jet aeroplanes and sky-ferries, as well as Fred Emery and his dancing girls.
Why were there two versions of the film? It seems a little absurd now, but despite Austin and Morris merging in 1952 to form the British Motor Corporation and Austin and Morris 1100 models (and Minis) being all but identical, they were still very much treated as separate companies. So, whilst the films are very similar with most scenes being identical, each scene had to be filmed twice - with a Morris 1100 and then an Austin 1100. In what was perhaps a precursor to British Leyland’s product positioning where Austin were seen as ‘high technology’ whilst Morris were to be ‘traditionally engineered’, Alex Moulton and his revolutionary Hydrolastic suspension did not make the cut in the Morris version, despite being very much pride of place in the Austin film.
The copyright of this film is held by the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust (www.britishmotormuseum.co.uk) and we are very grateful for their permission to reproduce it here.
Alex Moulton test-driving the 1100 in front of the Bradford on Avon Tithe Barn, on 14th August 1962 - the day before launch.