I recently allowed a picture of an elegant lady to catch my eye because she stood beside a 1913 Bullnose Morris Oxford. The caption said… “Our family car in the early sixties, my Mum bravely posing in front of it in the garden. One of my earliest memories was Lord Nuffield presenting my parents with a brand new Morris Minor, as a prize for having the oldest Bullnose still running. It was a lot warmer on the school run after that. Does anyone know where this one is now?” I contacted the picture’s owner with a recent picture of the same car and enjoyed the subsequent correspondence with the sender, Leigh Wootton. His father was the famous Aviation/Motoring artist Frank Wootton and his mother evidently enjoyed dressing for the occasion when they took their faithful old Morris CF 1177 out for a drive fifty years ago. I told Leigh that Morris made 394 cars in 1913 and out of the 19 survivors listed by The Bullnose Morris Club, his is no longer the oldest running car, that accolade being enjoyed by MX 8372 as described in The Automobile Magazine of September 2013.
This image shows the Woottons at the B.A.R.C Midnight Concours at the Grand Hotel Eastbourne, June 1959, where they won second prize in the Edwardian motoring category and HERE we see 3 year old Leigh behind the steering wheel. In 1958 William Morris ( Lord Nuffield) was promoting his latest Morris 1000 and it was the Woottons who won the prize described above. (Read the story here). Leigh tells me his Dad sold the Morris in 1967 and bought a Bentley which they kept for 20 years. You can imagine the delight on Leigh’s face when I showed him this video from British Pathè news archive and he saw his parents polishing their car at a 1958 Bullnose Morris rally when he was a mere twinkle in their eyes.
(Text by Robin Batchelor, pictures courtesy Leigh Wootton)