52 Days In a Morris Minor 1000
11,500 miles of motoring through 27 States of the USA

This article appeared in Motor magazine, 25 September 1957.

On top of the Rocky Mountains, at the end of the second-gear climb to the 14,260 foot high summit of Mount Evans, Colorado.

As a matter of plain fact, I never did intend to make the double crossing of the North American Continent in a Morris Minor 1000. Looking for a car with long legs and a short thirst for fuel, I decided to take advantage of my opportunities as a journalist to borrow a Wolseley 1500.  But, the Wolseley 1500 proved to be one of the few good things of this world which could be bought with pounds but not as yet for dollars; so instead it happened that on the morning of July 13 I drove out of a rain-swept New York in a Morris 1000 two-door saloon of which the speedometer read 00742 miles. When I reappeared in New York around 1 a.m. on September 3, even the folk at Hambro Automotive Corporation who import Morris cars into the U.S.A., seemed faintly surprised to find a speedometer reading of 12,244 miles on their car — and when it was mentioned to them that a British immigrant who was arriving in New York the next week had been advised by my fellow-traveller Edgar Wadsworth to explore the possibility of buying this same car, as a nicely run-in model in which to depart towards California with his wife, Wojtek Kolaczkowski who looks after the Hambro showroom on 57th Street, gave us a look suggesting that he thought maybe Noel Coward was right about Englishmen.

Mad? If I get the chance to repeat the trip next year I shall not need asking twice; though just possibly I may try to choose a time of year when the mercury in the thermometer rushes past the 100° F. mark a little less frequently. From the red-tinted backs of our white nylon shirts, it would seem that some of the weather we drove through was hot enough to make even a dead cow perspire, refrigerated interiors being one thing which we envied some of the locals. For the rest, we seemed to cover at least as many miles as most other people bet een 9.30 a.m. and supper time, and to arrive at least as fresh and hungry as any-one else—and arriving by Minor 1000, we had a whale of a lot more dollars left for supper than the V-8 voyagers who were not all getting 10 miles out of their little American gallons of gasoline.

The route stretched from New York on the East Coast to Los Angeles on the West Coast and back via a large figure-of-eight across the country.

Statistically, our 11,502 miles (on a distance recorder accurate to two car-lengths in 30 miles of Turnpike) cost us $113,45 for 331.3 U.S. gallons of regular-grade petrol (starting and finishing with a full tank), an overall average of 34.7 miles per U.S. gallon equivalent to 41.7 miles per British gallon; this was a modest 0.985 cents per mile or 0.845 British pennies per mile for fuel which cost us an average of 34.3 cents per gallon—much of our fuel was bought in remote mountain areas where it sometimes cost as much as 40 cents per gallon, just double the rock-bottom price for which we got one tankful in Missouri. Only once, in California, did we spend money on premium-grade petrol, the less heavily leaded cheap grades proving entirely adequate in octane rating.

Oil cost us $8.43 for 18 American quarts to top-up the sump, plus four changes of oil which used 3 American gallons of oil costing $6.06, together adding just under 13% to our fuel costs. Greasing at roadside garages at rather more than recommended 1,000-mile intervals cost $8, or about 7% of our petrol cost, and repairs cost us just 10 cents (eightpence halfpenny in English money) for one new tyre valve, 0.097% of our fuel cost. On the
whole, we think we travelled fairly cheaply at 1.18 cents per mile (1.015 pence per mile) total motoring cost, and occasional turnpike roads at a toll of 1 1/4 cents per mile looked jolly expensive luxuries to us — we, in fact, paid out $11.55 in toll for using various bridges, tunnels and turnpikes plus $18.50 toll to take the car through Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, Craters of the Moon and Yellowstone National Parks.

Will the smallest Morris cope with American conditions? Our 10 cent repair bill in 11,500 miles hints at the answer to that question. In addition to this replacement, I reset the contact breaker gap after 4,500 miles, this having closed up and made the performance sluggish by the time we reached Los Angeles. I also tightened the oil filter and oil pressure relief valve cover nuts to check slight oil leakage, adjusted the brakes after 6,000 miles to restore them after initial bedding-down, and used a Phillips screwdriver (not included in the tool kit, surprisingly) on a sun vizor bracket and the door catches to check slight rattles. Both wires had to be coupled to the stop-lamp switch when I discovered that our stoplamps were not working — I doubt if the leads had ever been coupled up previously — and at intervals I picked up the handbrake release knob from the floor and screwed it back into place, none of these quick and simple jobs involving paid help. The general view of garages which greased the Morris
and could find nothing else to do to it seemed to be, that if many customers changed over from complicated Detroit automobiles to straight-forward imported models the repair trade would catch a cold. . . .

The unique product of freakish nature, the salt flats outside Wendover, Utah, look vast and lonely even when speed record attempts are in progress.

 Will the Minor stand heat? I think that our hottest weather was about 108° F. in the Nevada deserts around Las Vegas, and despite a butterfly-plastered radiator we had no overheating, the electrical petrol pump ticking rather as if it was trying to keep Double Summer Time on certain occasions, but the engine always starting first touch whether cold or hot and never faltering. At one stage engine oil consumption rose to around 1,000 miles per U.S. gallon (1,200 per imperial gallon) with mixed brands of S.A.E. 30 oil in the sump, causing us to change over to S.A.E. 40
oil and avoid mixing brands, after which our last 3,000 miles of driving called for only one American quart of oil each 1,000 miles.

How does a 37 b.h.p. car cope with a morning rush-hour in which every other car has upwards of 100 b.h.p. on tap? Ten days spent 20 miles out of Detroit, making daily visits to factories in and around the city showed that, with reasonably energetic use of the gear lever but not over-rewing or exceeding speed limits, the Minor got through the morning and evening rush hours quite as fast as most other folk, losing a car's length when the light first went green and the Yank alongside span its rear wheels, but usually hitting the local cruising gait of 50 m.p.h. without dropping back appreciably further. Of the European cars I saw in city traffic, a large proportion were darting from lane to lane in a manner which American cops are apt to frown upon but obviously were penetrating the traffic just as nimbly as they do in the less tidy congestion of European towns.

Down in the hot valley at Zion National Park, the Minor carries an evaporatively-cooled canvas drinking water bag in case of a puncture delay on a lonely desert road.

Will the Minor tackle big mountains? Our high spot was the summit of Mount Evans, Colorado, which at 14,260 feet claims to be the highest motor road in the Northern Hemisphere and tops the highest Alpine pass by some 5,000 feet, three of us riding to the summit non-stop without anything lower than 2nd gear being needed—we had already left our luggage at our Motel in Idaho Springs on that occasion. Even here, as on other occasions at 10,000 and 12,000 feet altitudes across the Continental Divide, the engine would still idle in a slightly ragged but quite reliable fashion, without any re-setting of the mixture. On long, straight grades up into the mountains, there were infuriating occasions when 37 b.h.p. less some loss from altitude sufficed only for perhaps 45 m.p.h. in top gear, or the pace might even sink to 35 m.p.h. in 3rd gear, what time big American cars sailed by — the occasions were infuriating because in at least 75% of the cases the cars which passed us would have to be re-passed on
winding or downhill road ahead, and once re-passed might never be seen again. The "1000" engine gets across mountains quite nicely, but a "1500" engine in about the same size of car would have had advantages, both in the mountains .when altitude and gradient were adverse, and sometimes too in the plains when an adverse wind could blow all day and make our 60-65 m.p.h. cruising pace into almost a full-throttle maximum.

But, cruising at just over 60 m.p.h. most of the time, we found the little Morris well able to cover big distances. Our longest day runs were 586 miles from Montrose, Colorado to Pampa, Texas and 536 miles from Rainelle, West Virginia to New York, N.Y., both runs from late starts and including not merely ordinary meals but in each case loss of an hour due to Eastward driving across time zone boundaries. Our best accurately noted average speed away from the Turnpikes was 120 miles in a few seconds under 120 minutes without exceeding 65 m.p.h., between Ely, Nevada andWendover, Utah. In Texas, our mile-a-minute-plus cruising gait was below the local average, but there were other areas such as Kentucky where we seemed to. be the fastest car on the road — driving habits vary widely from State to In hot weather, the fact that the Minor is inclined to be draughty internally is no disadvantage, and with windows wide open the growl of a rather noisy rear axle was not conspicuous as it might be in winter.  The individual front seats proved very comfortable, and when the third member of the party stayed behind to take a job in Los Angeles we improved the limited range of driving seat adjustment (and the lack of passenger seat adjustment) by moving both seats to the more-rearward alternative mounting positions which are concealed beneath the carpets.

Western landmark of the journey, Golden Gate Bridge spans an entrance to San Francisco harbour which is strangely reminicent of Falmouth Bay, in Cornwall, UK.

In New York before I started on this trip, a local motoring writer described American roads as rough.  On the whole I disagree, for whilst there are badly surfaced dirt roads in many residential areas, even the least important through-roads passed fairly smoothly beneath our not-unduly-soft torsion bar front springs. Our roughest road was a dirt one through the fringes of an atomic testing area which we used as a short-cut from Yellowstone to the Craters of the Moon volcanic area, and our most strenuous route the Tioga pass in Yosemite Park where 9,900-foot altitude and gradients steeper than I in 7 would have made a stop-and-restart by the luggage-laden Minor very doubtful in a few places. Somewhat to my surprise and much to my joy, our trip hardly reduced shock absorber efficiency at all.

Around American cities, the compact size of the Minor did not prove such a great advantage as the clumsiness of big cars in European cities had made me expect. At times a narrow car could filter round the corner at traffic signals when there was not room for anyone else to follow, and occasionally a short car would fit into an otherwise useless spot in an apparently full parking lot. But in the main, American cities are designed for big cars, and with kerbside parking limited to defined areas with one car per parking meter the space not occupied due to the smallness of the Morris could not be used by anyone else.

No, not lost, the Minor passes through Moscow, Michigan, going west.

It was on the open road, oddly enough, that at times we were happier in a small car than we would have been in a large one, for in many areas (Missouri seemed a typical one) quite busy roads and bridges seemed uncomfortably narrow for big cars meeting one another at speed. Crossing most of the continent from Detroit to Los Angeles with three people in the car, pack- ing all the luggage in was a job which needed to be done tidily, but for two people the Minor was big enough to permit some change of position during long drives.  At first, driving in shirt sleeves, we missed the coat hooks which are to be found above the windows of every American car, but we soon found out that the Minor's steel body structure had a lip above the windows, from which coat hangers would hang securely with our jackets upon them.

Because the rear suspension has been stiffened or for some other reason, the present-day Minor does not seem to handle with quite the phenomenal precision of earlier and slower examples with side-valve engines; this I am sure is fact, and not merely an impression resulting from everything else having improved so that standards of judgment are higher.  But the rack and pinion steering remains quick and positive, and by American standards the Minor handles like a sports car, rolling a little when cornered fast, but on open curves habitually overtaking in virtual silence outside large vehicles from which the most anguished shrieks of rubber in torture were emerging. Usually we performed this manoeuvre with the driver's spare arm dangling out of the window in the not-so-cool breeze, just to rub salt in the wounds of the overtaken driver who was busy winding up yards and yards of steering with every available hand. On a cambered or windy straight, however, the Minor actually needs a firmer one-handed hold of the wheel than does many a modem American car, driving conditions in which cars come out of Detroit 6-abreast at a steady 50 m.p.h. during the evening rush hour, on a road divided by painted lines into six none-too-wide lanes, having forced the evolution of American cars which really will follow a straight course without much regard for camber or the suddenly-encountered slipstream of a 55-60 m.p.h. Greyhound motor bus.

Sunshine was occasionally interrupted by thunderstorms, one of which flooded the main road through Otis, Colorado.

By mixing business with vacation in a manner which, apart from the irresistible temptation to add more and more visits into the programme, was highly successful, I was enabled to sample the Minor in very varied parts of America. On the first stage from New York to Detroit, a weekend got lost in the Adirondack Mountains and on the Canadian border at Niagara. Between Detroit and Los Angeles, we took in the highest mountain road and the deepest mountain canyon in the U.S.A. as well as the Mojave Desert, carrying on the front of the car the fashionable canvas "Desert Bag" of evaporatively-cooled water in case a puncture should delay us amidst the lonely, sun-scorched wastes which still await irrigation. Our route to the Salt Flats of Utah took in a Sunday run across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge as well as more mountains. Wet weather on the salt flats gave us time off to gape at the geysers and boggle at the too-tame bears of Yellowstone.  The National Hot Rod Association's Drag Racing Championships diverted us south and tempted us to see the unhurried life of Kentucky and Virginia during our final weekend. Mexico and the Alaska highway had to be left out of the schedule, but if anyone thinks that perhaps these would disclose limitations upon the Minor's performance, then two volunteers to go and disprove the heresy would be easy to find.

The object of this article is not to tell readers how to make a holldaymaker's allowance of £100 cover a dollar holiday; that story must wait until the Motor Show is over. Suffice it for now that a good British small car can laugh at American road conditions; that if you can spare three weeks for holiday-making in America plus about a week each way for the transatlantic boat trip, and are prepared to sleep two to a room in comfortable but out-of-the-cities motels, you can apply for shipping accommodation in the sure knowledge that the personal and car currency allowances of £100 per person and £35 per car will not leave you too poverty-stricken a tourist to enjoy yourself in America just as much as we did.