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| BMC Mobile Training Unit - Transporter 1959 |
The British Motor Corporation Competitions Department was set up in January 1955 and became one the biggest competition operations in the world. It continued to flourish for twenty-five years until 1970 when it changed to Special Tuning in a attempt to capitalise on the bludgeoning aftermarket tuning business. The enthusiastic and now renowned team turned production vehicles into world beaters from race to rallying. During its heyday it transformed works drivers into household names with the likes Paddy Hopkirk, Pat Moss and Timo Makinen with the international successes of the rally Mini Coopers and Austin Healeys. With such an extent of race and rally programs it required a fleet of vehicles for transportation throughout Europe. Drivers of the these BMC transporters were very competitive themselves often proclaiming them to out perform the ‘opposition team trucks' up hills and on the flat!
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| BMC Mobile Training Unit - Transporter 1959 |
In 1958 the service manager at Nuffield Exports Ltd, George King, commissioned Marshall Motor Bodies Ltd in Cambridge to build a series of Mobile Service Training Units. Referred to as MTUs by most of the people associated with them, they were manufactured from October 1959 on BMC coach chassis. They were designed by Pininfarina and built to a very high specification with all-aluminum frame with 18 gauge aluminum exterior panels.
This vehicle was one of a series designed to serve as a mobile classroom, to travel around the dealership network training mechanics in the procedures required to maintain the newly introduced front-wheel-drive Mini.
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| BMC Mobile Training Unit - Transporter 1959 |
The driving cabin could accommodate five, with three passengers on a bench seat behind the driver. Access to the rear classroom area was through a sliding door in the double-skinned bulkhead. The classroom could accommodate up to nine students plus instructors.
This MTU had already been converted into a transporter when it was discovered by the late Graham Galliers in a disused railway station at Rednal near Oswestry, Shropshire in the early 1990s, but four years would pass before he finally managed to persuade the then owner to part with it. The restoration took nearly ten years and was not completed until 2005. While researching the vehicles history Graham contacted Basil Wales formerly Head of BMC Special Tuning Division.
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| BMC Mobile Training Unit - Transporter 1959 |
Basil was very helpful and soon discovered that this particular truck was his: the one that was transferred to the Competitions Department, believed to have been registered BMC 43. In its new role it was used to transport display boards, store and sell Special Tuning parts, as well support the works rally program as a mobile stores and workshop on UK rallies carrying spares, welding equipment, a Hydrolastic pump, etc.
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| BMC Mobile Training Unit - Transporter 1959 |
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