Alfred Ernest Morrison started a small engineering business in Leicester in the 1890s, making bicycles, motorcycles and later stationary engines, battery chargers and cinema equipment. In 1933 his eldest son, A. C. Morrison, got talking to a baker on the golf course, built a prototype electric bread van within a month, and delivered the first production vehicle later that year. Orders flowed in for the small “Terrier” and the larger “Mastiff”, and electric vehicles soon replaced the engine business.
In 1935 production moved from Grace Road, Leicester, to a new factory in Brunswick Street, South Wigston, where Morrison could build complete vehicles in chassis sizes from 5 cwt to 3 tons, with milk-float, van, lorry and refuse-collection bodies. In 1936 it joined Associated Electric Vehicle Manufacturers, alongside Electricars of Birmingham, and from 1942 all the group’s vehicles were sold as Morrison-Electricars.
The Austin Motor Company bought half the business in 1948, and through BMC and British Leyland it became Crompton Leyland Electricars. Hawker Siddeley bought British Leyland’s share in 1972, and in 1983 the business was sold to M & M Electric Vehicles of Atherstone, effectively ending Morrison-Electricar, although M & M kept the Electricars name.
