‘It’s done 528k miles through 16 countries’

John Frye, who recently retired as Morris Minor Owners Club chairman after 40 years, took his 1969 Minor Traveller to South Africa when he went out there to lecture back in 1973. Due to a dock dispute, the poor car rotted on board the ship. He found the shell of this Series II saloon in Randburg, a suburb of Johannesburg, and bought it for 15 Rand (about £8) before spending a year transferring parts from the Traveller to the Saloon, which would become known as ‘Victoria’ after his grandfather Victor.

John went on to drive the car tens of thousands of miles including four times to Zimbabwe through Beitbridge. John told PC: ‘One memorable breakdown was in Orlando, a suburb of Soweto, not long after the shooting of two white people in their car in a racially motivated attack. We shouldn’t have been there legally but had got lost and a massive storm meant I couldn’t see a thing to diagnose the problem, let alone cure it. The people of Orlando could not have been kinder: they towed me to a nearby house, where they also had a black Series II Morris. They used some of their own precious spare parts to repair Victoria, gave us some food and drink, and then escorted us to the main road back to Jo’burg. We met them, some weeks later, and gave them all the spare parts that we could. Their kindness lives with me always.’ John returned to the UK in 1977, bringing ‘Victoria’ with him. It wasn’t long before, in 1978, he found himself at the helm of the MMOC when the call went out for a new chairman. ‘Victoria’ was used as John’s everyday car until 1999 before undergoing a restoration in 2000 by John’s late friend Ian Portsmouth, resulting in the car she is today. John says: ‘At last count, Victoria has visited 16 different countries and, having owned and driven so many different marques that I have lost count, I would relinquish all of them except Victoria’.