Colour Finishes and Upholstery

Morris Mini Traveller Colour Finishes and Upholsteries, April 1960

To my way of thinking the Traveller has three main components that need to be in top order for this to be a first class restoration. The bodywork and paint, the timber and the interior trim. So I was very pleased to pick up a set of cards showing the colour finishes and upholsteries that were available in 1960 when the Traveller was released. These are fabulous, there are three cards (the first one is double sided) the second and third card have nice big swatches of paint and pieces of upholstery vinyl stuck to them. The cards show the three paint colours available at the time of release, curiously they are just labelled white, red and blue, whereas the colours were official known as 'Old English White', 'Cherry Red' and 'Clipper Blue'. Likewise the interior trim is either labelled red or blue, but were called 'Spanish Red' and 'Spanish Blue' elsewhere. My car is old English white (OEW), with grey fleck and Spanish red trim. The cards are dated April 1960, which was well before the September 1960 release, but after production had started.

The best thing about the cards is that they have been stored in the dark all this time so shouldn't have faded or discoloured. This will be a great help when it comes to matching the original colour, there were at least three variants of OEW used by BMC in the sixties. Likewise I will be able to compare the original vinyl swatches to  the reproduction trim available today.

Once I have worked out how to store the files online, I'll post up a link so that anyone who wants a copy can download them, although the colour reproduction is not terribly good so they may not be much help. I have some parts manuals I'll try to scan and make available too.