What does the boot badge say

1960ish - 1971 Mini - Morris 850, deluxe, Cooper etc
1971 - 1973 Mini - Clubman GT, 1100, Mini
1973 to 1978 Mini - Leyland Mini

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1964 998cc Cooper
1971 Mini K x 2
1972 Clubman GT

Hi Steve.

Not wanting to get into an argument, but the compliance plate only tells part of the story.

With anything BMC or Leyland, confusion is par for the course.

As I pointed out in my first post, the company name up until March 1973 was British Leyland Motor Corporation (Australia). This name is on the compliance plate on the blue 1971 Clubman.

This information is from much previous research, although I cannot locate the reference just at this time. However, in the new book by the Leyland Australia Heritage Group, titled Building Cars in Australia, it says the company name changed in December 1971. I will look into this a bit further. It may be, and I could stand corrected, but I am reasonably confident, that there was a subtle name change in December 1971 to The Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia, followed by a further name change in March 1973 to simply Leyland Australia (however, see the 1981 compliance plate below).

The compliance plates on the two Mini S (Gambier Turquoise and Plum Loco cars above) both illustrate this - to make the change easily and cheaply (a Leyland trait, no doubt) the word "British" was simply ground off the tooling for the plates.

This change on the compliance plates appears to have taken place around May 1972.



Compliance plate from March 1972 Clubman GT - note the British is still on the plate.



Compliance plate from May 1972 Moke. Note: Mokes at this time were sold as BMC Moke - the only cars sold in Australia as BMC branded (I think). In fact, the Moke had a BMC Moke badge on the front only in 1968 to 1969 or 1970, then the front badge only said Moke, but they were still sold and listed as BMC Mokes. In 1973 they became Leyland Mokes, even though the front badge still only said Moke.



Compliance plate from 1981 Moke - note that this is a new pressing, rather than just having the word British ground off the dye, but still says Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia.

Getting back to 1971, the homologation papers for the Clubman GT clearly state the car is a Morris.




As in the UK, when British Leyland was established in 1968 (1969 in Australia) the car division was renamed the Austin-Morris division. In 1971 (in the UK) the Mini was designated under its own brand name and Morris and Austin versions were deleted - however, other car models remained as Austin, Morris, etc: such as the Austin Metro. Other name changes followed.

In Australia, the cars remained as Morris or Austin up until 1973, when the company name changed and all cars were relisted as Leyland cars. These included the Morris Marina, which in 1973 became the Leyland Marina, and the Austin Kimberley/Tasman (discontinued in 1972).

The Mini was still sold as a Morris up until March 1973. The name on the compliance plate refers to the manufacturing company, not the brand of the car.



Compliance plate from 1971 Cooper S. Note that the car is described as Morris YG2S4, even though the manufacturer is The British Leyland Motor Corp of Australia.

With the introduction of the square-front Minis in mid-1971: YG2S6 Mini 1100; YG2S7 Mini Clubman and YG2S8 Mini Clubman GT, the compliance plate changed from Morris to Mini, but the cars were still sold as Morris.

Confusion reigns because by this time the Mini was being promoted in advertising as simply Mini in its own right, and the situation is often made worse because of press reviews of the cars. Wheels magazine, for example, wrote: "British Leyland pops its new Mini Clubman range onto the market...". This is accurate, because the cars were built by British Leyland, but misleading because they were not sold as Leylands.




Back page from the March 1971 brochure for the Mini Clubman and Mini Clubman GT (the cars were released in August 1971, but obviously the brochures, handbooks, etc had to be printed prior to the launch). Note, right down at the very bottom of the page, that the brochure was produced by the British Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia Limited - Austin Morris Division.

So, as I said, for the first month or so of production, the Mini Clubman S was built by British Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia, even though the compliance plates had already changed to Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia, and from March or April were built by Leyland Australia.

Yes, it is all quite confusing, but this is how I understand it after many years of research on the subject.

Cheers,
Watto.

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Watto .
Photojournalist
Mini historian and enthusiast
http://www.theminiexperience.com.au

Agreed, somewhere around there. My 11/72 GT had Leyland Australia badges.

Not getting involved as to whther my GT is a leyland or a morris though

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Another source of such data is the Owners Handbook. There were several versions printed over a number of years. The model names and descriptions, and the producing company name was information that often changed with the version. Each version was also dated so it's possible to get a timeframe for the change from Mini to Leyland.

I have my head down this burrow now - http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=77323

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ex-NSW Police 1970 MK II Cooper S
VMCI #43

Was a 1972 MGB a Morris or a Leyland?
It was sold by the local Austin/Morris dealer.
It had a British Leyland badge on the mudguard.
The compliance plate says Leyland Australia.

As Richie would say:

Everywhere you look, you say to yourself, gosh that's interesting!

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1967 Cooper S - new front bearings to do.
1965 Cooper S shell - Slow progress. No time or money!
1966 Deluxe- next rustoration!
Mk 2 & XJ6 Jags. Less said the better.

Morris, the same as the Morris Oxford that it was based on

Tim

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1951 Morris Commercial J Type Van
1955 BSA C11G
1961 Morris Mini Traveller
1969 Triumph TR6R
1977 Leyland Moke Californian

But it has an Austin 1800 motor.

I thought it was a Wolseley 18/85 motor

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1967 Cooper S - new front bearings to do.
1965 Cooper S shell - Slow progress. No time or money!
1966 Deluxe- next rustoration!
Mk 2 & XJ6 Jags. Less said the better.

So where did the rust come from?

That's defiantly a leyland thing

And definitely for free.

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1967 Cooper S - new front bearings to do.
1965 Cooper S shell - Slow progress. No time or money!
1966 Deluxe- next rustoration!
Mk 2 & XJ6 Jags. Less said the better.

All this bit of paper shows is that CAMS referred to it as a Morris, why would they do that? The previous models (Mini K's and Cooper S) were Morris but this series were only called Clubman GT,1100 & Mini, they did not yet use the Leyland moniker. It was simply a case of them getting it wrong.

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1964 998cc Cooper
1971 Mini K x 2
1972 Clubman GT

So if we are to take this CAMS Document Seriously we also must Accept that CLUBMAN GT's Did not Get the 9FXEY Engine number Prefix??

This Cams Document is hardly Proof That the Factory called it a Morris... Just a load of B.S.

Dave

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Hmmm....

I wouldn't say it is proof either, but certainly evidence in support of an argument.

Sadly, without original factory drawings it is not going to be possible to prove anything, either way.

I'm not really sure how much it matters, but obviously it has stirred up a bit of a hornets nest on a seemingly minor technicality.

Should CAMS homoligation papers be considered accurate? Well, if not, then why all the fuss when you wanted to run a car with a bore or stroke that differed from what was on the papers - after all, it would only be a little bit bigger...

Naturally, all the information on the homoligation papers would have been supplied by the manufacturers and it was up to them to ensure that all cars of the listed type met the specifications as laid out in the papers. It would therefore have been the manufacturer who supplied the information on the car's make and model to CAMS, so it is unlikely that CAMS would have been the ones to make the mistake.

To suggest that anything on the CAMS papers is simply BS or a mistake is to question the validity of the homoligation papers in their entirety.

As I said, without something concrete from the Leyland factory, the question will not be completely answered either way.

I offer as further evidence, though not proof, so don't go bad-mouthing this little snippet either, that the new book recently put out by the BMC-Leyland Heritage Group, Building Cars In Australia, lists the Mini Clubman series (1971 to 1972) - saloon van and GT, as being Morris.

While it is certainly conceivable that this could be a mistake, and later (in fact only the next page) it lists the Clubman GT as Leyland Mini GT (1972 to 1973).

However, I should point out that the main people involved in the production of this book are all former engineering staff at BMC-Leyland's Zetland factory and were some of the people directly involved in the development of these cars. They have always insisted to me when asked, that the Clubman series was originally referred to as a Morris.

It is also important to understand that what was done by the marketing and sales people was not always in accordance with the engineering people. Witness the Mini K (where K literally stood for Kangaroo, denoting that the car had 90% local content) which was the name given to the car by the sales department, whereas in engineering terms it was the Morris Mini De Luxe Mk2 - and was designated YG2S1. As the Mk2 versions of the Mini were basically the same as the Mk1 but with 1098cc engines instead of 998cc and a few cosmetic changes (the Mk2 Cooper S of course retaining the 1275cc engine) there was little or no engineering requirement needed so the cars were still designated YDO4, YDO5 and YDO6, as per the Mk1.

Interestingly, though the YDO21 is referred to as Morris Mini Clubman (Std), but had a boot badge that said Mini 1100 and chassis prefix YG2S6; YDO22 is Morris Mini Clubman (Deluxe) but the boot badge says Mini Clubman and the chassis prefix is YG2S7; while YDO23 is the Morris Mini Clubman GT but the boot badge only says it is a Clubman GT (does that mean it is not really a Mini?) and it has a chassis prefix of YG2S8. Remember that the Morris Mini De Luxe Mk2 (sold as the Mini K and with boot badges saying Morris Mini 1100) was designated YG2S1; the Morris Mini Minor Mk2 (sold as the Mini 1100 and also with boot badges that said Morris Mini 1100) was YG2S3 and the Morris Cooper S (notably not called a Mini Cooper) was designated YG2S4.

This all seems rather pedantic, I know, but the question was asked and I merely offered up what I believed to be the correct answer. The evidence, though not proof, supports my statement that the Mini Clubman and Clubman GT were in fact Morris cars, though built by Leyland and sold as Minis.

The original question, though, was whether a 1973 Mini Clubman S was a Morris or a Leyland.

This comes down to the point I made about when the change-over took place from British Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia and Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia, and the debate whether it was December 1971, sometime in 1972 or March 1973, as I believed was the case, or whether there were two name changes.

I offered a number of facts, some of which may be open to question.

What is without doubt is that no car was sold as a Leyland Mini before April 1973, with the release of the Leyland Mini and Leyland Mini S.

Also of fairly high reliability, as I hope I have shown, is that at least from 1971 to 1972, Minis were listed as Morris, but sold as Minis, though the manufacturing parent company was Leyland.

An above question concerns the MGB, and my understanding is that although built at Zetland from 1968 to 1972 by Leyland, and fitted with Leyland badges on the wings (the MGB was also built at Enfield by Pressed Metal Corporation under license, from 1963 to 1968) they were always known as MGs in the engineering sections and sold as MGs - never as a Morris and never as a Leyland (in Australia). This is something I will be investigating further in the next few months, as we will feature the 50th anniversary of the MGB in Australia in Issue 4 of The BMC Experience. It will be interesting to see if and when the Leyland badges changed from British Leyland to Leyland Australia.

An important point, though, is that the MGB was only ever assembled in Australia from CKD, whereas the Mini by this time was assembled from locally-pressed panels with locally-assembled engines and most locally-sourced parts.

The Mini Clubman S was launched in March 1973 and within a month the Mini Clubman, and Mini 1100, and hydrolastic suspension, had been discontinued (the Clubman GT was discontinued in December 1972 or January 1973, with the last known cars shipped in January 1973), so the Mini range then consisted of only the Leyland Mini and the Leyland Mini S.

So, getting back to the original question from John Sneddon, a Mini S built in March 1973 was most likely a Mini Clubman S.

It was also possibly a Morris, but probably not a Leyland.

And that, my learned friends, is about as definitive as we can be about the car in question, without any concrete proof from the manufacturers.

I'm sure someone will have more to say on this subject, but I will not.

Cheers,
Watto.

_________________
Watto .
Photojournalist
Mini historian and enthusiast
http://www.theminiexperience.com.au