OCCASIONALLY, YOU see a car which is just begging to modified, but which, alas, will never be anything other than an OE rebuild.

    Aside from a couple of safety related mods, there won’t be anything radical happening to this Moggy. So while it will get a Ford-based front brake disc conversion and halogen headlamps, it won’t be turned into something more befitting of a ‘Dep-O’ feature car by its anonymous owner – so we’ve resorted to some computer ‘blue sky’ shenanigans to create the Woody pick-up we would have built.

    Anyway, before we get carried away to our fantasy world, let’s deal with the reality of rebuilding a custom-bodied Minor.

    This really is one of those ‘a bloke walks in off the street’ stories, but before we go there, I’d better explain about what we’re dealing with because this is a Morris with a difference.

    The Minor, which celebrated it’s 60th birthday last year was available in two and four-door saloons, Tourer / Convertible, commercials (van and pick-up) and the quaintest of the quaint, the Traveller estate which was there until the bitter end of Mogginess in 1971.

    The chances are that if you know your cars then you know all about the dear old Moggy’s gestation at the hands of Alec Issigonis and Jack Daniels. You might even know that to keep Austin dealers happy after the demise of the A35 van a few ‘Austin’ Minor vans were built, but the chances are that you won’t have seen one of these before. Hell, it was enough to make us sit up, take notice and ultimately scoot down to Southern Triumph Services to take a closer look...

    The front is familiar enough – it packs the face and cab of a very late 1098cc 1971 Minor – but its tail is something very unusual because this is a woody pick-up built by Wood & Co Coachbuilders of Southampton and it’s one of only 150 built.

    “When the guy came in here I didn’t know him from Adam,” says Southern Triumph’s big cheese Mark Swingler. “He said that the had a Morris Minor pick-up, that it needed some welding and would I have a look at it because we’d been recommended. When I got it up on the ramp though, it clearly wasn’t terribly well.