Don’t believe me? Look!
See those odd, matte-finish black fenders? They’re rubber! I can’t think of any other car that used actual, deformable rubber as major body panels like this. Sure, there’s been plenty of plastics and rubber-coated materials, and rubber bumpers that may even form parts of fenders, but as far as a whole metal body panel being replaced with a rubber one, I think these GPO vehicles are the lone example. I could be wrong, and will be delighted to be shown so in the comments, but this is definitely an exclusive club. The rubber-fender’d vans were Series II Morris Minors, as they had their headlights moved from out of the grille area like the first-generation ones, but differed from other Series II Minors design-wise because the headlights were not faired into the fenders, instead being separate, dune-buggy-style units that just perched atop their rubber fenders. This is likely because the rubber’s ability to deform would have likely popped out headlights that were inset into the fenders, something that could have made children cry, seeing a friendly GPO van with a headlamp-eye dangling by its optic nerves/wires.
These rubber fender vans were never made in huge numbers, and were gone, replaced by conventionally-bodied Morris Minor vans by 1955: I think this is the dent that was mentioned:
For rubber fenders that would seem to be immune from dents, it’s especially ironic that they seemed to all come with a starter dent pre-supplied from the factory! I guess so just in case there were any true dent-lovers, they wouldn’t feel left out by the dent-proof fenders. As for why the GPO wanted rubber-fendered vans, some sources seem to suggest they were a part of a greater philosophy that emphasized safety and caution, based on other modifications the vans had: I’m so taken by the rubber fender concept because I have a vivid memory from when I was 16, and had just bashed one of the fenders of my ’71 VW Super Beetle on the way to my after-school job selling and installing Apple //e computers. I remember sitting at a table and drawing ideas for rubber fenders I could possibly have made and replaced my vulnerable painted metal ones with, but my co-workers thought I was an idiot. Well, continued to think. If only I knew then that decades ago the British Post Office had the same idea! That would have showed them, all of them! I imagine that rubber fenders were a lot more forgiving of parking scrapes and made fender benders quite literal but with almost zero consequences, and should a distracted phone technician bump into you while trying to park, a rubber fender would likely cause a lot less damage than a metal one, whether you were driving or being a pedestrian. That all fits with what appears to be the GPO’s very safety-oriented modus operandi, with little rubber protectors on bonnet corners and probably those plastic things inserted into electrical outlets, if they had any. Were they hiring toddlers as phone technicians? (pictures: Heritage Machines, British Motoring Icons) https://images.caradisiac.com/logos/8/2/8/4/268284/S7-fiabilite-de-la-citroen-c4-cactus-la-maxi-fiche-occasion-de-caradisiac-191983.jpg https://sf2.auto-moto.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2015/01/CITROEN-C3-CACTUS-750×410.jpg Basically, the same material as the later rubber nose MGBs – those were originally intended to be painted body color (colour, in this case), but BL ran into the same issue GM had with paint adhesion, and decided to just skip it entirely and leave them plain black, like those old Morris Minor fenders. I once has a bicycle saddle that was steel framed like a Brooks tensioned leather saddle, but was rubber and branded Dunlop, Made in England. Not particularly comfortable, but darn near indestructible. The pictures of the GPO Morris front mudguards have a Dunlop smell. The Morris Minor was built like a tank anyway with thick metal and would survive crashes better than the human beans rattling around inside. I AM a good person, I swear.
