Durable Car Company


The Durable Car Company was established in 1992 in Bataduwa, near Galle, Sri Lanka, to manufacture spare parts for Morris Minor cars.
The company was set up by Charles Ware of the Morris Minor Centre in Bath, UK and Sri Lankan diplomat and businessman Dhanapala Samarasekara. The motivations for its establishment were on the one hand the desire to conserve Morris Minors as classic cars and a sustainable means of transport, and on the other to create employment in Sri Lanka.
In the period after the Morris Minor was launched in 1948, the vast majority were exported, in particularly throughout the British Empire. Production ceased in 1970, but it is estimated that at least 4,000 of them are still on the road in Sri Lanka. At the same time Sri Lanka, though suffering from high unemployment, possessed a skilled workforce. Creating a factory using appropriate technology would contribute to conservation and local development, and be consistent with Buddhist value of environmental protection.
The factory was opened 1991 in the presence of British High Commissioner David Gladstone, himself a Morris Minor owner. It eventually manufactured a range of over 80 parts for Morris Minors, predominantly chassis and interior body parts, which did not require sophisticated technologies. Its products were exported to the UK by air freight.
The business plan was to manufacture at first single parts, then expand into sub-assemblies, then entire body shells. The firm also reconditioned local cars. The factory started with 50 employees, and aimed to employ 1,000 people within 4 years, training them in metalworking skills. However this projected growth did not take place and the workforce gradually fell to 12. In 2017 the company was taken over and became the Ceylon Classic Panel Company.