Charlie would like to know more about this Morris J he bought in Victoria BC, email him if you recognize it please
This had me wondering if a Morris J is part of the MG company,... MG is pretty well known for the great little sports cars. The letters MG are representative of Morris Garages, and I looked them up to see about the Morris J.
The Morris J was launched by the Morris Commercial subsidiary of Morris Motors in 1949 and produced until 1961. In 1952 the Commercial name was dropped and the van was marketed as the Morris J-type. As well as complete vehicles, the J-type was also supplied in chassis form to external body makers and it appeared, amongst other uses, as a pick-up, tipper truck, ice cream van and milk float. Many were bought by the British Post Office and these differed from standard in having rubber front and rear wings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Commercial_J-type and there is even a Morris J registry and info source http://www.jtypevan.com/ which has links to Morris J van owners websites.. (really cool ones too)
Here's what Wikipedia has about Morris Garages:
The MG Car Company got its name from Morris Garages, a dealer of Morris cars in Oxford which began producing its own customised versions to the designs of Cecil Kimber, who had joined the company as its sales manager in 1921. He was promoted to general manager in 1922, a position he held until 1941 when he fell out with Lord Nuffield over procuring wartime work. Kimber died in 1945 in a freak railway accident.
The first cars which were rebodied Morris models used coachwork from Carbodies of Coventry and were built in premises in Alfred Lane, Oxford. Demand soon caused a move to larger premises in Bainton Road in September 1925, sharing space with the Morris radiator works. Continuing expansion meant another move in 1927 to a separate factory in Edmund Road, Cowley, Oxford, near the main Morris factory and for the first time it was possible to include a production line. In 1928 the company had become large enough to warrant an identity separate from the original Morris Garages and the M.G. Car Company Limited was established in March of that year and in October for the first time a stand was taken at the London Motor Show. Space again soon ran out and a search for a permanent home led to the lease of part an old leather factory in Abingdon, Oxfordshire in 1929, gradually taking over more space until production ended there in 1980. The MG Car Club was founded in 1930 for owners and enthusiasts of MG cars.
Originally owned personally by William Morris, the company was sold to Morris Motors (itself part of the Nuffield Organisation) in 1935, MG was absorbed into the British Motor Company, created in 1952 as a merger of the Nuffield Organisation and the Austin Motor Company. BMC merged with Jag in '66 to become renamed as British Motor Holdings, which didn't last 2 years before mreging with Leyland to form British Leyland, which couldn't make it and in 75 was renamed British Leyland, but in 1980 was killed off due to politics.
After BL became the Rover Group in 1986, ownership of the MG marque passed to British Aerospace in 1988 and then in 1994 to BMW.
BMW sold the business in 2000 and the MG marque passed to the MG Rover Group, the Group went into receivership in April 2005, in July the Nanjing Automobile Group purchased the rights to the MG brand and the assets of the MG Rover Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_(car)
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