It was the fourth of January, 1961 - freshly returned from the holidays, the workforce at Cowley reached a very special milestone - the 1,000,000th #MorrisMinor rolled off the line - the first British car to hit that milestone. A staple of British roads to this day, by then the car had been in production for 13 years. It was durable, cheap, and a good handler even if it was quite slow at first. It quickly became a best seller and ultimately more than 1.7 million were made into 1972. - Designed by a team led by Alec Issigonis, the Minor was arguably his most profitable creation (the Mini is more famous, but also more complicated). Issigonis had worked at Morris since 1936 and immediately became an important part of the engineering team. As WW2 wound down, he designed an advanced small car for the postwar era, codenamed “Mosquito.” It was radical - a space-maximizing unibody with an independent suspension, rack and pinion steering, and a flat four. The car was too far out for William Morris (by then Lord Nuffield, who also hated the styling), and many features were scrubbed for production for cost or complexity. The old Morris sidevalve engine continued in place of the flat four - but much of the Mosquito remained in the production Minor. - Any fears about the car not selling quickly evaporated. Morris/Nuffield and Austin merged into British Motor Corp. 1952 and the old #Morris sidevalve was replaced by the Austin A-series. By 1961, the car was offered with 948-cc A as the #Minor1000. #BMC marked the million-car mark with a special run of 350 “Minor Millions.” The actual millionth car was donated to the U.K.’s National Union of Journalists’ benevolent fund, but 349 more were built for sale - mostly in the U.K., with 21 marked for export. They were standard Minor 1000s underneath, but all came painted in a unique lilac shade with white leather interiors and a “1000000” badge where “1000” would ordinarily be. - “GEO 470” is Million #249, purchased new near Barrow by the grandfather of current owner Chris P., and used regularly until it was parked in 1972. It was restored in the U.K. in 2018 by @charleswaremmc and shipped to its new home near Seattle. (at Vancouver, British Columbia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz0sQ9FlXbp/?igshid=1pzt0i8r3wcbd