Morris or MG? A disc-wheeled mystery...

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On the face of it, this Monday's mystery car presents no particular challenge. Clearly, we are looking at a two-seater "Flatnose" Morris Oxford or Cowley, models which sold by the thousand between 1926 and 1930, looking very much at home on a characteristically leafy interwar suburban road, probably in Middlesex if the "MP" registration is anything to go by. There's something about the car which is most un-Morris-like, however. Whoever saw a Flatnose with racy polished aluminium disc wheels? Wheels which look, in fact, suspiciously like they have come from an MG...

Does that mean, then, that we are looking at an early Morris Garages product? We would say not; the first MGs were distinguished by special bodywork given a sporting flair, e.g. with raked windscreens and panels of polished or engine-turned aluminium. Although the earliest MGs used variations on the Morris Oxford badge, the badge on this one looks to be nothing more than a plain Morris badge. The first MG model, the 14/28, introduced as a variation on the "Bullnose" Oxford in 1924, was offered in Super Sports guise with wheels exactly like the discs seen on this car, and possibly they remained available as the 14/28 was converted to Flatnose specification in 1926, but all the Flatnose MGs we have seen have sported wire wheels.

Considering that the first MGs were little more than Morrises with special bodywork and lightly modified chassis, and that Morris Garages functioned simultaneously as an agent for Morris cars, we'd speculate that there was a possibility that one could specify certain MG accessories when ordering a new Morris, especially if they were redundant stock, as the disc wheels would appear to have been by 1927.

What do our readers think? Are we on to something? And if so, the only mystery that remains to be solved is why you would specify a car with sporty wheels, and then spoil the effect by fitting such slab-fronted and heavy-looking bumpers...

Words: Zack Stiling
Photographs: Stiling Collection

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