Break on Through ...
Bastardised Rating : 6

Randy Williams has been at it again. One of the most prolific Morris Minor customisers in the States, Randy has been modifying Minors for decades. Here's his excuse for this one...

This is a picture of a truck that took me 8 years to buy, a year to build and five minutes to regretfully sell.  The story goes like this....

One day around Easter my wife and I, still not having children, saw an ad for a white shepherd puppies.  We called the old woman up and she said, "Just head for the desert and turn off route 14, down a dirt road when you pass the Last Chance Cafe?"  We've always been adventurous and that is how we came to own "Easter Beast" the white German shepherd. A year later, a girl tracked us down through the White Shepherd registry -- they gave us pick of the litter and $350 stud fee.....what a deal!  Guess what lived next door? That's right, a white Morris Minor pickup.

So while my wife and the girl were trying to demonstrate to the dogs how to breed(!?), I was trying to buy a truck and so every year for seven years, around Easter's son's birthday (Lazarus Long) I would go back and bug the old man to sell me his Morris.  "No, no, I swear I am going to fix it up this year."  His wife would stand in the window and when her husband wasn't looking, she would whisper, "please, please just take it away.  I beg you.". Finally, I caught him a six pack to the wind (he was drunk) and I reminded him that he promised to sell it to me if he didn't fix it up this year.  And so, good to his word, although he couldn't remember telling me that, I was now the proud owner of what was once a nice savable truck that had eight more years of wear and tear from the elements.

THE EXPERIMENT
I wanted a convertible and a truck and so I cut the top so it would fold down into the trunk or using marine slip pins you could take the top off completely.  Then put it back up and you would have to look close to see that the top came off at all.  Add the usual 1275cc, ribcase gearbox, 3.90:1 diff and set of wire wheels and disc brakes and you've got a Randy Williams, California special. I had a lot of fun cruising up and down Venice beach with that one.

Here is the sad part.  An actress who had seen it on a coke commercial before I had restored it, begged me to sell it to her.  She caught me right before Christmas, told me she was taking it back to Germany and she would never sell it. I sold it for $4500.  A year later, she sold it to Starcars for $5500.  He put it in the famous Pebble Beach auction and it sold for $8500.

So, British European gave me a little truck, except it had no engine or firewall.  I've decided to use what's left of the rusty 4 door I had cut up for the limousine and sometime in February, you should see it a cherry red pickup cruising the beach again.

By the way, the guy in the background of the photo is Jim Morrison of The Doors.  I was feeling arty that day.

Your Morris friend,
Randolph Williams