Morris Minor African adventure: 1500 miles of memories

By Graeme Hurst

| 13 Sep 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Retracing a Morris Minor’s history with a 1500-mile African adventure

Knowing the history of a car adds a certain charm and authenticity to the ownership experience.

While keys often change hands with a file of MoTs and receipts, details of past keepers can be more tricky to establish.

Especially when the car is 94 years old and from another continent.

Except in the case of Peter Hills’ 1929 Morris Minor, which originally appeared in the September 1993 issue of Classic & Sports Car.

The Morris Minor as found in 1970, having been abandoned for 15 years

Acquired as an abandoned wreck in rural Zambia in 1970, its ownership can be traced back through 10 previous keepers, all the way to when it was delivered new to neighbouring Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) as the first Morris in the land.

And not just names, either: Peter has formed a list of all 11 addresses where the car was kept during its lifetime.

That’s one more than the number of owners, because the last one, in Itimpi – a small village outside the city of Kitwe in northern Zambia – is the key to this little product of Nuffield’s endearing history.

It’s where now 79-year-old Peter snapped a photograph of the Morris in early May last year: on the exact spot where he’d scooped up the seriously rusty remains of the four-seater tourer 54 years earlier, then aged 26 and living in Zambia.

The Morris Minor during its early-’90s rebuild

The subject of an impressive, first-principles restoration over the following two decades, the little Morris – which has been registered in the UK since the early 1990s – was back on the patch of African soil where Peter’s ownership story began.

His path to that place had started in the late 1960s, when he visited family in Cape Town: “I was at my sister’s when André du Toit, one of the founders of the Crankhandle Club, the city’s biggest old-car group, arrived in a Ford Model T that he had rebuilt from a wreck.

“I thought, ‘I’d quite like to have a go at something like that.’”

Back in Zambia, he put word out for a project and was soon looking at a Derby Bentley in need of light restoration.

Owner Peter Hills’ route was a 1500-mile adventure from Zimbabwe to Zambia

“It would have been a much better buy,” remembers Peter, “but the owner said I was too young for a Bentley and refused to sell it to me.”

Undeterred, he kept looking until he heard news of the abandoned Morris in Itimpi, via a friend’s father.

The return to that rural site in 2023 was the final stop on an epic 28-day, 1500-mile trip for Peter and three friends in the Morris.

Titled ‘Back to Africa’, the journey realised Peter’s long-held ambition of returning the car to its African roots to mark 50 years of ownership, taking in all the previous owners’ addresses in Zimbabwe, plus a few historic locations, before driving over the border to Kitwe in Zambia.

Fuelling up in 2019, before COVID-19 delayed the planned start

This latter portion of the route would be emulating an 800-mile drive completed by the car’s previous owner, Mrs Rene Lang, in 1953.

Just two years after that, the Morris broke down and was left out in the open.

The Back to Africa idea had started to evolve after a fellow car-club mate in Cape Town, where Peter and wife Sandy have a home, suggested the rare model should visit: “For the past 10 years we have been splitting our time between London and Cape Town.

“Over the years, Peter Truter in the Crankhandle Club has often nagged me: ‘When are you going to bring your car to Cape Town? We’ve never seen a Morris Minor here.’”

The 1929 Morris Minor was challenged by road grooves formed by lorries

The South African port city seemed like a good starting point for fulfilling Peter’s dream and, after considerable planning and coordination, the idea was soon on its way towards fruition when he shipped the car from London to Cape Town on a Carnet de Passage.

But that was late 2019, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic…

Fast-forward to March 2023 and, two carnet extensions later, the road trip was again on the cards.

Peter found three friends to assist with the documentation and general logistics for the tour.

The latter mainly consisted of a four-wheeled closed trailer behind Peter’s BMW X5, with which to transport the Morris the 1500 miles to the intended start point, at Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe.

The Morris Minor needed an engine rebuild before the trip

That’s where the car’s first owner, Arthur Ward, lived.

There, the plan was to unload the Morris and follow the plotted route, with the BMW following as a sweeper vehicle and to ensure that the little Morris wasn’t summarily steamrollered by a truck.

Peter estimated that he’d need seven weeks to complete the round trip from Cape Town, and aimed to set off in the second week of March.

This was to ensure that he and the team had some wiggle room before the Minor had to be shipped back to the UK in mid-July, when the latest carnet was due to expire.

Tanganda Tea headquarters was a key stop-off

Preparations went down to the wire after a family friend asked Peter if the Minor could be used for their daughter’s wedding in Cape Town.

“Time was so tight that I gave her a date for their nuptials if they wanted the Morris,” he muses.

Just as well the couple-to-be complied: the crankshaft snapped catastrophically after the ceremony: “I really have to thank them, because that was the last time I’d be driving the car before the trip, so we would have arrived in Mutare only to have had the crankshaft go.”

The Morris Minor next to Birchenough Bridge

What followed was a hugely stressful but ultimately rewarding couple of weeks as various mates in the local classic car club assisted in a Herculean effort to source and install a rare replacement crankshaft – along with all the associated elements needed for an engine rebuild – from a local MG collector, who only asked that Peter replace his precious crank with a similar item after his adventure.

With their departure date back on track, the team of four headed up to Mutare where the Morris’ on-the-road itinerary kicked off with a visit to the Hillside Golf Club.

That was the address the car’s first owner, Arthur Ward, had used to register the car as U750 – when the town was known as Umtali – but only in 1936, despite it being a 1929 model.

“It wasn’t until then that the local authorities first started requiring that cars were registered,” Peter explains.

The potholed road to Masvingo, Zimbabwe

“When I found the Minor, it still had the remains of the NK3177 registration plate on it and the licencing office in Kitwe told me that it still belonged to a Rene Lang,” he continues.

In the 15 years since it was abandoned, Mrs Lang had moved house but, by chance, Peter managed to find her: “I stopped by a shop where my friend Roy Scott, who had helped me find the car, worked.

“When I mentioned that a Mrs Lang was the owner, a customer in the shop said, ‘I know Rene Lang.’”

The two were soon in touch.

Ingutsheni Hospital, where one of the Morris’ previous owners worked

“She and her family had moved to Kitwe from Harare (then Salisbury) as a lot of people did during the copperbelt boom,” explains Peter, who grew up in Zambia after his family moved there from the UK when he was a toddler.

“I’d actually already stripped the car down and sandblasted the chassis, and when I told her this she said, ‘Oh well, I suppose you can have it.’

“She also handed over two spare wheels, an MG ignition coil – which I still have – and the car’s Northern Rhodesia logbook, with the original Southern Rhodesian one tucked inside.”

The Morris Minor’s original owner frequented the Mutare Club in Zimbabwe

The latter document proved to be a stroke of luck.

The car’s Southern Rhodesian registration number was the key to its early history.

“I wrote to the vehicle registry office in Salisbury and they supplied original owner Arthur Ward’s name and address details,” recalls Peter.

“As a bonus, they added a list on the back of all the subsequent owners, although not in the correct sequence.”

The handwritten record dated March 1971 set him back the princely sum of 25 cents as a ‘search fee’, which the records clerks asked for in retrospect to cover their time extracting the additional information – definitely a bygone era.

‘The longest, 207-mile drive of the trip was made even more taxing by the 30°C heat and the awful state of the roads’

At the Hillside Golf Club, Peter had his first taste of an enthusiast welcome on the trip, particularly when the connection to various places was made.

“There was a huge turnout of members, who insisted we take it for a drive and a photoshoot on the 18th green.”

Evidently Arthur Ward was something of a bigwig in his day.

“He was an engineer who founded the local Tanganda Tea estate,” explains Peter.

He was also a member of the Mutare Club, based in the 19th-century hotel where the Morris was no doubt parked outside in its early years.

The crownwheel and pinion were replaced mid-trip

From Mutare, Peter and team motored over to the Birchenough Bridge, which, having been completed in 1935, the Morris likely traversed back in the day.

The 87-mile drive was the first real stretch of the Minor’s legs following the engine work: “Before we left Cape Town I’d only managed to put 51 miles on the rebuilt motor, so it was still quite tight.”

A day later, Peter headed for Great Zimbabwe near Masvingo, adding another 207 miles to the odometer.

It would turn out to be the Morris’ longest single drive of the trip, made more taxing by the 30°C heat, which necessitated frequent stops to top up the radiator, and the awful state of the roads.

Bulawayo marked the 500-mile point, and the Morris Minor’s first oil change since the start of the trip

“The team joked that I earned a ‘PhD’ along the route – as chief Pothole Dodger!”

The group then headed to Bulawayo and on to the Matopos Hills, where colonialist prime minister Cecil John Rhodes is buried – another 200-mile-plus stint, this time over three days.

There was a spot of sightseeing before a return to Bulawayo to drop by the Ingutsheni Central Hospital.

That’s where the car’s second owner, Mary O’Gorman, was matron while the Minor was in her possession, from 1940-’41.

Again the Morris enjoyed plenty of attention, with staff insisting on a group photo at the entrance.

Crossing the border from Zimbabwe to Zambia to follow in the previous owner’s wheeltracks

Bulawayo marked almost 500 miles – a third of the trip – and the Morris needed its first oil change post-engine rebuild.

The Vintage Car Club of Zimbabwe was delighted to help out, packing Peter and team off to the workshop of one of its members.

It turned out to be much needed, when disaster struck en route.

“The differential started making an ominous clicking sound,” Peter recalls, “and when I took out the drain plug, there were bits of the spider gears stuck to the magnet inside.”

Peter’s Morris Minor charmed wherever it went

Thankfully, the crownwheel and pinion were unharmed.

Just as well, because the locally sourced replacement (again thanks to word being put out in the club) had working spider gears, but a rusted crownwheel and pinion.

Amusingly, the two club members who assisted Peter refused payment, only asking that he transport a tray of 48 eggs and some car parts to Harare. Never a dull day in Africa.

With the rear axle silenced, it was time to search out the third owner’s address, on the way to Harare.

Kaguvi Barracks, formerly a WW2 RAF base, was where Corporal Sydney John Hammond enjoyed the Morris for a year, after Mary O’Gorman had parted with it in 1941.

The Morris Minor’s Blockley tyres were among the parts widely unavailable

It changed hands again in late 1942 when a Flight Sergeant, William Owens, took over the keys, but he was based at Salisbury’s Belvedere RAF base.

The Morris had two further local Air Force owners before a Mrs Mary Sims, of Glen Athol Estates in the nearby town of Banket, bought it.

With that in mind, Peter and the team made tracks for Harare, with the Morris clocking up close to 300 trouble-free miles across the following three days.

Back in the 1940s, Belvedere RAF base was set up to train Spitfire pilots, but it was later closed to allow for suburban expansion, which explains the aviation-inspired names of the routes the Minor found itself rolling along once it got there.

The Morris first completed its 800-mile run from Harare to Kitwe in 1953; it was still a challenge in 2023

“The base is long gone, but there are roads called Cessna and Boeing, and what was the runway is now Ganges Avenue,” says Peter, who also found changes at the address of the eighth owner, Donald Meyer: “His house appears to now be a church!”

Then it was time to visit the farm where the seventh owner, Mary Sims, kept the car, although Peter was in for another surprise.

“The farm had remained in the family until they were evicted in 2002,” Peter explains, “but it transpired that it actually had rich gold deposits and it’s now a gold mine. The Sims family never knew this.”

The car’s ninth owner, Nicholas Oosthuizen, was also a farmer, according to the address on the licensing record, but the exact location was unclear due to names having been changed since, so the convoy headed back to Harare.

It was there that the Morris became associated with its 10th and most adventurous owner, Mrs Lang.

‘Back in the 1970s it sported Ford headlights, Morris Eight wheels and a thatched roof made from elephant grass’

She gave her address as the Grand Hotel when she licensed the car back in 1948.

By then, the Minor was approaching 20 years old and had lost its rather novel overhead-cam engine.

“When Rene Lang acquired it, the Morris had a later and more common sidevalve unit, which was probably a lot more reliable,” explains Peter.

That motor was still installed – at least what remained of it – when he found the car all those years ago, and was only replaced after Peter had sourced the correct overhead-cam engine in England, towards the end of the Minor’s ground-up restoration.

Back in Harare, Peter and his team weren’t able find any remnants of the hotel that had once been at an intersection in Zimbabwe’s capital city, but the downtown photo stop was a good starting point for the most important sector of the Back to Africa trip: retracing the astonishing 800-mile route that Mrs Lang drove up to Kitwe, way back in 1953.

The restored Morris Minor returned to its former resting place

By her own account, when Peter met her back in the early 1970s, the Morris was fairly tired when she set off.

At that time, it sported later Ford headlights, Morris Eight wheels and a non-standard radiator.

It also featured a thatched roof made from elephant grass after the soft-top had succumbed to the harsh African sun.

The harshness extended to the roads in those days, too, making them very taxing to navigate.

“A lot of the journey would have been on tar strips and laterite roads,” says Peter.

“Getting up the Chirundu escarpment must have been a real challenge.”

A visit to Kariba Dam was a bonus

Some 70 years later, the routes were still demanding, with a lot of the Tarmac damaged by heavy trucks leaving indentations that caused the little Morris to tramline and made it tricky to handle on occasion.

“There were times when we were barrelling along at 50mph, basically out of control,” says Peter.

One bonus of retracing Rene’s tracks was the chance to see and – thanks to an obliging official – to drive over the impressive Kariba Dam, which wasn’t completed until six years after her epic trip.

From there, it was nearly 140 miles up to Lusaka, and 100 more than that again to Kitwe, before Peter could steer the Morris towards Itimpi and its final address.

After being admonished as too young to own a Bentley, Peter’s 54 years of ownership and determination have brought the car that he did buy, and restore, full circle.

Images: Peter Hills

Enjoy more of the world’s best classic car content every month when you subscribe to C&SC – get our latest deals here

A 25,000-mile adventure in an Austin Seven

1948’s game changers: Morris Minor