‘The One GT That Just Had To Be’. If, in 1969, you had been thinking, ‘At last – this is the GT I’ve been longing for,’ you might perhaps have been thinking of some semi-exotic marque that had yet to produce a generously cylindered, slinkily glamorous coupé worthy of adolescent wall space and a chunk of BluTack. Perhaps something from a healthily growing BMW, sports car-rich Triumph or even Citroën. You would not have expected those vaunted Gran Turismo initials to appear on the bodywork of one of the most common cars on British roads of the day, a small four-door saloon often spotted on the school run, a trip to Budgens or parked on a grassy verge beside a picnicking family.
The 1969 Austin (and Morris) 1300 GT was the hot(ish) version of Britain’s best-selling car, the Austin/Morris 1100/1300, and it was certainly accessorised for its role as British Leyland’s one GT that just had to be. Besides being offered in several of the fashionably striking hues of the day, such as orange (bronze yellow, in BL parlance), a deep purple (aconite) and limeflower (a sanitaryware-adjacent sludge green) it came with a modish vinyl roof, faux alloy wheel covers, and matt black trim strips decorating its flanks. Crass though these sound, they had the surprising effect of transporting the 1300 into the trendier world of the Ford Cortina and Vauxhall Viva GTs, both of these not entirely deserving carriers of the Gran Turismo letters appearing before the Austin.
The makeover also produced a remarkable transformation of an increasingly sedate-looking car, a car of the early 1960s, pre-central heating world of ubiquitous cigarette smoke, the BBC light programme and weekly wage packets. Park a 1300 GT next to a Mk1 1100, something your reporter is easily able to do because he is foolishly in possession of both variants (don’t ask), and you can see clearly they are from different eras of automotive fashion.
