Biography of Malcolm Archbald Smith - Morris Marina 1800

Malcolm Smith's Family History Archive

Vehicles driven by

Malcolm Archbald SMITH

[Ref. S.1]

Morris Marina 1800

This was the next generation of company cars after the 1600 Cortinas and it was quite different. Malcolm was given one like this but in a darker blue. It was bigger and faster than the Cortinas but had a downside in that it was too powerful for it's light weight which made it unstable. To add to that the brakes were not efficient enough for the vehicle. As Malcolm was always a brisk driver, those characteristics of the car got him into difficulty on more than one occasion.

The first was when he was coming home through Dorset and decided to take a new route as he often did. He was driving quite fast along a minor road when he arrived at a bend that was tighter than he had anticipated. He could not brake at that point but managed to steer round it, in the process tha back of the car slid sideways but allowed him to arrive around the corner pointing in the right direction. However, by that time he was on the wrong side of the road and was confronted by a car with a startled looking lady driver who had just seen his car arrive sideways in front of her. Malcolm was able to comfortably get his car around hers without running too close.

A similar thing happened when Malcolm and his wife were using the car on a touring holiday in Scotland. They had stopped at traffic lights on a crossroads in a quiet contry location. When the lights changed to green, Malcolm accelerated away up a short uphill stretch to find a sharp left-hand corner. He was going too fast to get round the corner and there were stone walls on each side of the road. Luckily, there was an open field gate in exactly the right place, so Malcolm went through, turned round, and continued on the journey.

Another speed related situation was when Malcolm had been driving along the M3 motoerway in his usual rapid manner. When he got to the junction that he wanted, he turned off and thought that he had slowed down enough, but he hadn't. He got to the top and found that he was still exceeding the speed limit and quite expected to run off the road or even turn the car over. He got away with it again and managed to get the car round the junction and was also lucky that there were no other cars in the way.