Minor Details

February 18, 2019

"Good things come in small packages."
Aesop

We called it “The Rolls Canardly” because it… “rolls down one hill, can ‘ardly make it up the next!”. “It” was a 1951 Morris Minor “saloon”. In case the reader is still puzzled, “it” was a car! Saloon is one of those peculiar British words meaning “an automobile having a closed body and a closed trunk separated from the part in which the driver and passengers sit”. (We colonials call it a sedan!)

The little car had been passed down to Bruce from our grandfather, Robert Hainsworth. Robert, a true Englishman, had eschewed North American cars, instead preferring those made in his homeland. When Robert gave up driving in his later years, the car was promised to Bruce and on his sixteenth birthday, in 1967, Bruce became it’s proud owner. That little car, while providing little in terms of practical transportation, would provide Bruce and I with an education of sorts, in things ranging from linguistics to electrical theory, as well as hours of sheer fun.

"Linguistics", you ask, how so…? Well it seems our British friends have seemed to take a contrarian point of view on all things North American, and this nowhere more pronounced than in the world of automobiles. For example, what we refer to as the “hood”, they call the “bonnet”. The trunk is the “boot” and they can’t even agree with us on how to spell the rubber covering on the wheels, which they spell “T Y R E”. To make things even more confusing, they don’t even drive on the right side of the road! A few more examples should make the case clear: A shock absorber is called a “damper”, a battery is an “accumulator” and should you break down, don’t go looking for a wrench, for you’ll need a spanner. And just to make things really confusing, they do use the word “hood”, however across the pond this refers to the top of a convertible. Now to be absolutely clear, I don’t wish to insult our British friends. Being entirely unschooled in the etymology of English car terminology, perhaps it is we North Americans who are the true contrarians!

Being a teenager, the first modification that Bruce made to the Morris was the installation of a radio, something that would have been deemed a complete necessity in those days. It was here that we began our tutelage of electrical theory. Almost without exception, North American vehicles use a system called negative ground in which the negative terminal of the battery is attached to the frame of the vehicle. In simplistic terms this is an easy way to provide a return path for electricity to the battery without the need for an extra wire. Our British friends however, contrarian as always, deemed that the better approach was to attach the positive terminal of the “accumulator” (i.e. battery) to the frame. Instead of negative ground, they refer to it as “positive earth”. And thus began our education as we mounted the North American radio into the English saloon. Bruce, as skilled a craftsman as he was, pulled off the installation flawlessly. Appropriately, we could now enjoy the British invasion of the Beatles and Rolling Stones in a car of the same origin.

The little car, well of sturdy build, lacked one thing that most domestic automobiles had an adequate measure of: power. The anemic four cylinder engine produced a grand total of 27 horsepower, only 2 more than the lawn tractor that I currently own! This probably explained another rather puzzling feature. The speedometer sported a bold red line pointing resolutely to 30 MPH (50 KPH). We were never sure if this limit represented the absolute top speed that the car could go, or if it was merely a recommended limit. We were to find out. In those days most of the country roads weren’t paved. There was, however, a stretch of the Joffre highway about three miles away that was suitably flat, paved and most importantly, not heavily used. This would serve as the test track to probe the limits of the car’s performance. There must have been a bit of a tail wind that day as we were able to get the needle to nudge the high side of 70 MPH! I must admit that it was extremely difficult to get an accurate reading as the car was shaking so badly. (And maybe the test pilots inside it were as well!) Maybe that red line was there for a reason!

Satisfied that we knew the limits of the car’s performance envelope, we never got near that speed again. There was one occasion, however, when the needle did go higher. In fact on this mission, we were able to “bury” the speedometer. “Burying the speedometer, at least in those days meant getting the needle past the highest number on the dial, in this case 80 MPH. I should add however that this was done safely in the confines of the garage. You see, we were working on the brakes and the car was up on blocks with the back wheels off. It was a rather tempting scenario to simply fire up the engine and floor the gas pedal. Too bad we didn’t think to take a photo of that speedometer!

As the years passed, the little Morris was almost forgotten and then in 2004, I was suddenly given an opportunity to experience it once more, at least from the perspective of at least one of the five senses. Our oldest son, Jeremy, had met an English girl, Elissa. They were married in England in July of 2004. The transportation from the church to the reception was arranged in a “hired” car, which it turns out, was a Rolls Royce! This being my first encounter with the famous marque, I was quite impressed. I put my head inside an open window to take a look and instantly I was back inside the Morris, for the aroma of the leather upholstery was exactly the same in the two cars. I asked the chauffeur what year the Rolls was… turns out it was a 1951, just like the Morris. The Rolls Royce and the “Rolls Canardly” while of slightly different pedigrees were of the same vintage!