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There are certain sights and sounds that can immediately recapture the past – Nigel Planer singing Hole in My Shoe, the opening to The Comic Strip Presents... – and the sight of a well-preserved Marina or Ital Van. It would not be a typical month in 1980s suburbia without seeing a BT Morris attending to yet another malfunctioning telephone box.

In 1972 the Marina Van replaced the Minor Van, its badge-engineered Austin 6/8 cwt counterpart and the larger Austin and Morris A60 Half-Ton range. Operators were presented with a choice of 7 cwt and 10 cwt versions – the former featuring the 1,098cc A-Series engine and the latter boasting the 1,275cc plant.

The cost of the new “Austin-Morris” light commercials ranged from £665 to £775, and buyers were presented with a choice of “Standard” (fittings on a par with the average bus shelter) or the De Luxe (the luxury of a British Rail waiting room). As for the options, these ranged from servo-assisted brakes and an interior rear-view mirror to an enamel paint finish.

Such fittings (or lack of them) were par for the course in the early 1970s and what interested most fleet operators were capacity, running costs and durability. When Commercial Motor evaluated the Marina in 1972, they noted ‘Load space is 88 Cu ft and this increases to 104 Cu ft with the removal of the passenger seat’. Furthermore ‘Both models produced nippy acceleration, good road going performance over the mixed roads encountered and cruised comfortably at a motorway 70 mph with throttle travel to spare’.

Two years later, BL offered a 10CWT Pick-Up, and a 1978 facelift saw the launch of the facelifted 440 and the 575. ‘There are several competitive vans and pick-ups in the same category as ours. But frankly the facts show that none come close to the gutsiness, the get-up-and-go, the load-hauling of the Morris Vans and Pick-Ups’. In other words – ‘Please do not buy a Bedford, a Ford or one of those new Japanese imports’.

The brochure also complained that the Morris’s styling ‘has long looked good for your business. They’re smart and modern as well as clean and functional’. It was not an entirely unreasonable boast as the 440/575 was well-proportioned and looked far less Spartan than the Bedford HA. The introduction of the A-Plus engine in 1980 was a welcome development, and by 1982 the commercials gained the Ital’s nose.   

Here was ‘Crisp new front styling’, and the L specification models even featured a cigarette lighter, cloth upholstery, inertia-reel belts, front carpets and reclining seats. Equally importantly, the Ital commercials were hugely popular with public utilities; in July 1982 the Post Office ordered £4.7 million worth of Morris vans, and three months later British Telecom commissioned 2,047 units.

Production ended in 1984, together with one of the most famous names in motoring history. At that time, the Itals already seemed redolent of an earlier era, and today they are fascinating reminders of the days when a trip to the Happy Eater was the highlight of a Saturday afternoon.  Cue footage of the Morris van in public service -

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