Morris J-type, the Iconic Van of a Bygone Era, Comes Back as Electric Vehicle

Among the companies born or reborn at the time was Morris Commercial, a group in the business of making commercial vans. Their star product was the J-type.

Seen by many as an iconic vehicle in its segment, the J-type was killed in 1961, being replaced by a more modern variant. Since then, the company faded out of the public eye, only to come back in force in October 2019 with the announcement of the J-type's revival.

As with nearly all other cars brought back from the dead these days, the new van will be electric. Called Morris JE, the new van promises not to be a "replica of a 70-year-old design," but inspired by it and brought to a whole new level.

There's not much to go on at the moment when it comes to the capabilities of the JE, and Morris only released two unrevealing images of the machine. The prototype is officially scheduled to be launched this fall, which means in about a month's time at the most.

The original Morris was quite a successful van, having sold in 22 countries around the world. The entity in charge with its resurrection, owned by a Chinese company, is betting on a lot of hype surrounding the new interpretation.

According to the company's CEO, Dr. Qu Li, the development process for the van took two years, including the time needed to test a prototype. The executive does say there is however a lot of work to be done until the car goes into production.

"The working engineering prototype has undergone extensive road testing and the end of 2019 is an amazing conclusion to the first phase of the project," she said in a statement.

"We still have a little way to go to bring the project to full production, but we have the team and the product to make this an enormous success."