Austin and Morris 1100/1300: the best-seller Britain forgot (1962–1974)

For eight of the eleven years between 1963 and 1974, the best-selling car in Britain was not the Cortina, the Mini or the Escort. It was this one: the BMC 1100 and 1300, known to its engineers as ADO16, sold under six badges, bought by over two million people, and then rusted so comprehensively off the road that the country simply forgot it. The Austin 1100 is the great vanished best-seller, and rediscovering one today is the closest classic motoring comes to archaeology.

Issigonis does it again

Three years after the Mini, Alec Issigonis applied the same revolution to the family car: transverse A-series engine, gearbox in the sump, front-wheel drive, a wheel at each corner, and a cabin that made rivals look wasteful. Pininfarina tidied the styling into crisp, airy elegance, and the Hydrolastic fluid suspension, making its debut, gave the little car a long-legged ride nothing in its class approached. Launched as the Morris 1100 in August 1962, it was an immediate, colossal success; the Issigonis story has no purer commercial triumph.

Every badge in the empire

BMC’s badge engineering reached full flower on this car. The Austin 1100 joined in 1963 for the other dealer network; MG’s twin-carburettor version added pace; the Riley Kestrel and Wolseley 1100 dressed it in walnut for the traditional buyer; and the Vanden Plas Princess 1100, finished in Kingsbury with leather and deep pile, topped the lot as Britain’s smallest limousine. Same body, same mechanicals, six grilles. The upmarket versions were minor sellers then but lead the survivor lists now, having been garaged and cherished while the plain cars worked themselves into the ground.

The 1300 and the GT

The 1275cc engine arrived for 1968, turning 1100s into 1300s across the range and giving the design the performance its chassis had always invited. The Austin 1300 became the definitive form, the twin-carb 1300 GT of 1969 added a vinyl roof, a rev counter and genuine 90 mph pace, and the Countryman and Traveller estates carried the family’s practical end. Mk2 and Mk3 revisions modernised trim and tail lights along the way. Production ran to 1974 at home, longer abroad: Spain, Italy, South Africa and Australia all built their own, and the Austin Allegro had the unenviable task of replacing it.

The 1100 abroad

Success travelled. Spain’s Authi and Italy’s Innocenti built their own versions, South Africa sold the restyled Austin Apache and Spain the Victoria, both wearing elegant Michelotti tails on the familiar centre section, and Australia assembled the family as the Morris 1100 through the decade. America received it as the Austin America, a name the auction record still uses. The diaspora matters to owners now because odd brightwork and rare variants surface constantly, and because it underlines how completely this design was BMC’s world car before the term existed.

What an 1100 is like to drive

The driving experience is the Mini’s party trick with the rough edges rounded off. The car corners with the same eager, flat, front-drive keenness, but the Hydrolastic ride smothers surfaces that send a Mini skittering, and the airy glasshouse makes town work effortless. The A-series thrums along happily at 60, the long-wheelbase stability shames some far newer cars, and the whole machine feels engineered as one idea rather than assembled from parts. Period road testers called it the best-riding small car in the world, and on the right B-road the claim still makes sense; passengers raised on modern crossovers step out asking what it was.

Buying an 1100 or 1300 today

Rust is the whole conversation. These cars dissolved from the sills, subframe mountings, floors, inner wings and the notorious rear radius-arm mounts, and the survivor you view has either been properly restored there or will need to be; repair sections exist but structural work is the real cost. Mechanically everything is shared BMC hardware, cheap and understood, with Hydrolastic units serviceable by the marque specialists. Trim is the hunt, especially Vanden Plas and GT fittings. The 1100 Club’s registers and expertise are the buyer’s best protection, and a documented, dry-stored car is worth every premium asked.

Values: the cheapest important car in Britain

The market has not yet caught up with the rarity. Usable cars at £2,500 to £4,000 and good ones at £4,000 to £7,000 make the 1100 and 1300 the cheapest genuinely important British classic there is, with only the GT, the MG and the Princess 1300 pushing toward five figures. That prices the full 1960s family-car experience, Hydrolastic ride and all, at less than a tired MGB, for a car with a stronger claim on the nation’s memory than almost anything in the 1960s catalogue.

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