Austin had once been the best selling import brand in the US for a number of years in the immediate post-war era, until it was taken down by VW in the mid fifties. Of course the Austin-Healeys kept the name alive for enthusiasts for a number of years yet, but the ill-fated Austin America probably should have been the end of the road for the brand on anything but sports cars.
The Morris Marina, rebadged as an Austin in the US, was of course a BLMC Deadly Sin. And in the US, it was the final coffin nail for the Austin brand; sales were abysmal, and it quickly developed a toxic reputation. R&T’s review pointed out a number of shortcomings, but was not as negative as might be assumed, and was even able to find some good things to say about.
The progressive BMC FWD cars championed by Issigonis (Mini, ADO16, Maxi, Landcrab) had been a mixed bag; the ADO16 was a top seller and the Mini carved out a niche, but BMC was getting creamed in the UK fleet segment. Not rental cars and such, but “company cars”, which were a very common perk in the UK due to the tax advantages. Fleet buyers rather shunned these cars, and gobbled up the much more conventional Ford Cortina, Vauxhalls and Hillmans.
Sir Donald Stokes, in his valiant efforts to make BL a viable concern, decided that the solution was to cobble up a very conventional sedan to compete with those. Since the venerable Morris Minor had only gone out of production in 1971, utilizing some of its underpinnings as well as rummaging around the combined BL parts bins for other components, the Morris Marina was duly created in short order.
Its front suspension was straight from the Minor, the rear suspension from the triumph Toledo, which also donated its gearbox, and the engines were the long-running A and B series pushrod fours. For the US only the 1798 cc B series, as also used in the popular MGB but with a single carb was offered. “Something old, something new, something borrowed” was the refrain R&T used.
Roger Carr did a thorough CC of the Marina here, with a UK-oriented POV. He titled it “Is This The Best We Can Do? His take was decidedly more generous than mine would have been, so I retitled it as a BLMC Deadly Sin.
The Marina picked a terrible time to come to the US with “something old, something borrowed” and attempt to compete with a lot of fresh new blood from Japan as well as the US, in the form of the Vega and Pinto. I can’t dig up sales numbers, but it’s easy to just say it got creamed in the US, and from day one. These were very sparse on the streets when new, even in LA.
Why? The painful truth is that except for the sports cars, British popular-priced sedans and coupes had sold poorly here since the end of the import boom in 1960. The MG 1100 /1300 was an outsider, The Triumph 2000 was exceedingly rare, the Austin America had been a total flop. Americans had moved on, except for the roadsters, and that would end soon enough too.
Even R&T wondered: “when we first heard that BL would sell the Marina here, we wondered if there would be any market for it”. There wasn’t, for the reasons stated above.
The engine emitted familiar MGB sounds, but it didn’t run like one anymore. It had fairly good low-speed torque, thanks to its long stroke, but it quickly ran out of breath. A Pinto 2000 could run circles around it.The clutch chattered. There was a “buzz” in 2nd gear. The rear axle had severe tramp on a fast take-off. And don’t even consider buying the Borg-Warner 35 automatic version…
Understeer was strong, but at least the traditional British rack and pinion steering was decent. “It doesn’t handle well in the final analysis, but it’s predictable and “safe”.
The ride is ok on smooth pavement, but deteriorated quickly, and rougher roads also brought out rattles, squeaks and drumming. The antique Minor underpinnings also required a full chassis lube every 3000 miles. Sure; American buyers were going to be happy to do that.
The rest of the review covers the interior, which was adequate, and the speculation that reliability should be “average” based on experience with the MGB. That was a bit optimistic.
The Marina and the Plymouth Cricket (Hillman Avenger) marked the final coffin nail for British sedans in the lower price class, a segment they had once dominated in the US (There’s a reason none of us have found either one curbside in the US). Even the Vega had the Marina beat in almost every objective category, and at least there was a Chevy dealer to deal with its issues. Good luck finding a sympathetic or competent Austin dealer to keep your Marina on the road.
CC 1951 Austin A40 Devon: The Best Selling Import In Its Day PN
(Reflexively crossing myself while staring at the picture….)
A coworker had one of these. I asked him why and his answer sums up the Marina:
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
My boss was a car nut, and bought a Marina, as a car he could safely leave in the hospital car park at night. Kind of said it all. Think his good car was a Renault 16.
I remember seeing precisely one of these on the road back in the late 70s-early 80s; the poor car looked ready to expire even then.
I do remember these being around, but very lightly. What exactly did the GT moniker stand for? Certainly not Gran Turismo.
Maybe Generally Terrible? Got Trouble? Garbage and Trash? Gone Today? Grim Tidings? Gross Trouncing (for the bottom line forecast?)
Got Tealeaves?
After seeing the ads in Popular Science for these at the time, I asked my Dad if he was considering one as he was new car shopping. Not a outlandish question to ask after seeing the Fiat Strada brochure on the kitchen table. A big No
Worst part about driving one is having to dodge those pesky flying pianos
Oh, the memories I have of this one. My sister, who followed me to Erie, PA in college, rapidly found herself in a relationship with a good friend of mine, who owned one of these, bought new.
Beth and Don are rapidly closing in on their fortieth wedding anniversary, and none of the three of us, to this day, can forget that car. That’s how abysmally bad it was. And little sister and I periodically rag Don for his choice, with me constantly threatening to find one, fix it up, and give it to him as a birthday present.
How bad? If the Marina had been a sales success in the US, Paul would never have been able to start slagging on the Vega, because that car was a Toyota Corolla in comparison to the Marina. Let’s see, among the things I remember: The passenger seat mounts breaking with my sister (all of 5’1″ and maybe 105 pounds) sitting in it, with the parts backorder to fix it taking about six months. Which meant, for half a year my sister was sitting in the back seat.
How about the time the shift lever came out of the floor while the car was in motion? The constant electrical niggles starting around the first anniversary of ownership? The brakes that, while never failing, never gave any sense of confidence while under way? The typical British build quality of the time, convincing the three of us that the car was finished on the line about thirty seconds before the shop steward shouted “Tools down!” indicating this week’s strike action?
Almost fifty years later, and we still remember that car. While we’ve forgotten pretty much every other car that Don (who, by his own admission, is as far from a petrolhead as you can get) has owned.
It was that bad.
I read the review while at my desk at work, trying to stifle the laughter at the author’s pronouncements. And then he mentioned the Allegro . . . . . . . . ?
Though it’s rarely mentioned, the Marina was also a replacement for the older 1.6 Farina models as much as it was the Morris Minor. These had their last significant update in 1961 as all the new development was going into the FWD cars. The following year (1962) the Ford Cortina was launched and was soon selling like hot cakes. Although a similar size, the ponderous Farinas weighed about half a ton more which did nothing for performance or economy. To their credit, Rootes brought out a good, up-to-date Cortina clone at the same time as the Mk.2 version arrived but BMC just ignored it, letting the old RWD cars soldier on until 1971, albeit rationalising the range of marques available.
Really they should have had something like the Marina by 1966. Despite it’s poor reputation, when new these did sell well, sometimes reaching the no.2 spot in U.K. car sales so they could have been having more of that market (and profit from it) much earlier if they’d put their mind to it.
R&T were quite right; despite the fastback shape that version is really just a two door. From memory (and it was about 50 years ago when they were quite new) the back seats seemed a long way back, thanks to the doors being same ones used on the 4-door.
I’ve seen a few Marinas in Canada over the years but none lately. This one had over 280k miles on it so they could made reliable.
I’m not surprised. The basic bones had all been around for a long time and pretty simple and rugged. The issue with these in the US was mostly lots of niggling things that added up compounded by indifferent service.
I’ve become convinced that any mass-produced car ever built can be kept running almost indefinitely if the owner is able to address their weak spots effectively.
“I’ve become convinced that any mass-produced car ever built can be kept running almost indefinitely if the owner is able to address their weak spots effectively.”
I assume you’re not claiming that the car won’t break down often?
They were sold for a few more years in Canada than they were offered in the US. Commonwealth tariff preference still made a bit of a difference, and probably meant somewhat better (less worse?) parts availability.
When I was in high school, 78-82, most of the students who had cars were driving hand-me-downs, either from parents or older siblings. There was one fellow, a couple years older than me, who drove one of these. It was absolutely on its last legs, a mere 6 years after production – although the same could be said for the guy who drove a ’72 Kadette.
As “popularly-priced” British coupes and sedans go in the 70s US, the only other one I can think of was the Plymouth Cricket (nee Hillman Avenger) but that was gone in ’73 I think, replaced at your Plymouth dealer with cars from Mitsubishi.
We had a Cricket. What a woeful misadventure that was. From poor build quality to a dealer network constantly wanting us to buy a Valiant and cringed every time we showed up on their doorstep. (Among other issues were an untrained staff and an inability to get parts to having no desire & wanting nothing to do with it)( Michigan 70s import apathy was pretty strong)(even with a captive import ) It was the Dodge side of the house that had Mitsubishi.(not Plymouth)I have a vintage R&T comparison article. The Mitsubishi had the better build quality and driveline and the Cricket had the better suspension. The Cricket was a hot mess.
Interestingly in Canada the Plymouth Cricket became a Mitsubishi based clone to the Colt after the British Cricket left the market.
Don’t worry Paul – it was a deadly sin and with the Allegro (maybe not a typical deadly sin?) it stated tot he British public that “our” cars were not a well attuned to public needs and wants as they should have been and others were. The rest is history, almost literally.
One inaccuracy in R&T – the rear suspension was not from the Triumph Toledo. The axle was shared with the Triumph but the technically sophisticated and complex semi-trailing arms were deemed too much for the Marina, and leaf springs ruled, just like every other rear drive Morris for the previous 60 years
And worse, it was a really BAD leaf spring set-up, stiff and hoppily underdamped. Things like a Fiat 125 show that such a basic arrangement can be made to be quite good.
It’s yet another example of the depressing lack of effort – or, at minimum, money – expended on the awful whole.
The Ital was briefly imported into Uruguay, around 1981/2. Of course, I hadn’t ever heard about them at the time, and they looked pretty nice to import car-starved Uruguayan kids eyes. The one I remember was a pretty well trimmed model, but it kept the driver-oriented dashboard….RHD driver, that is. It was weird to reach to a radio that was oriented towards a passenger.
There were some problems at customs, though, and the importer had to close up shop.
FF to 1992, leftover cars which had been kept in storage (meaning barns) were auctioned off. I was looking for a car to get, and I could barely afford it. Mechanical inclined, practical FIL, who also was funding the car for me, said that it was nice but a car that had been parked for 10 years and had English electrics at that would not be as good for us as a 4 year used Fiat Uno. The Uno ended up overheating not too much later, but the Ital went on to somebody close to home and got an early tin worm case.
The Ital tooling was sold to someone in China but Ive never heard of it being used to produce cars one of the rival to the Marina recently ended production this century in Iran, easy to see which was the better car.
I can see where they got it wrong it was right at the start thinking fleet buyers wanted something easy to fix when what the really like is something reliable enough that it doesnt go wrong untill sold on as a used car.
There were a couple of other engine options available Leyland OZ fitted the 1750 O series and the 2.6L straight six from their P76, they werent brilliant cars in any configuration and I have driven several including a near new twin carb 1.8 coupe and a O series automatic coupe, a mate bought it for a runabout for his wife it was well used but registered and on a dealer lot for $450.00, I drove it from Parramatta rd Auburn to Pitt Town it wallowed about on the road and had little power like they usually did but in the subsequent 4 years my friends had it the car was disgustingly reliable it never missed a beat.
Almost, Bryce. Oz Marinas got the E-series engine, from which the sixes in P76’s and various UK Landcrabs and Princesses came.
Brand new, OHC, alloy head. How very high tech. Also, non-crossflow, long-stroke, revless, gutless, and a really awful engine. To wit, the performance figs shown here from the ancient B-series were practically no different. They were as incontinent as the ancient B, and overheated more.
The radio was oriented at the passenger on the RHD version too (with the new dash came in around 1975), so I’m not surprised the LHD one was a mirror image. Definitlely a case of style over substance.
https://twitter.com/julkinen/status/974025575827374080/photo/2
Perhaps British Leyland thought that drivers shouldn’t fiddle around with the radio while they were driving…
You could write up why there are Austin Maestros in Uruguay!
Gotta be CC effect I was driving my 66 Hillman around suburban streets a few days ago giving it some exercise and saw parked a Marina panel van in quite good condition, surviving commercial versions of these and any other working car from 70s UK production are remarkably rare
Memories! I have to confess, I owned one of these. A white 2door, had been sitting at a local repair shop on their back row for some time. This was about 1985, I inquired, and was informed that it needed a clutch and the owner would be interested in selling. My lucky day I thought. I parted with, I think $100 and was the proud owner of a cool unique british motor car. The clutch it needed, was just a slave cylinder seal, but interestingly enough BL engineers had designed the slave cylinder to just float/slide in a hoop casting on the bell housing. No bolts or anything. what held it in place was just the tension of the rod against the clutch fork. That should have been the first clue… Reverse gear failed (common problem), so just park somewhere that you don’t have to back out of. My dad doing some welding, built up the old reverse gear, and bought some more life out of the transmission, till it failed again… and again… bought a new reverse gear… failed again. Backyard ingenuity, and we found a german ford transmission from an old Pinto. Did some machining on the bell housing and … much better. Until driving one day on I-70, and somehow a ground strap had came loose between engine and body, causing the accel cable to act as a ground, melting the casing, which caused said accel cable to seize up (at interstate speed). I guess that’s a cheap cruise control.
No crossmember under the front at all, just some old Morris Minor kingpin design, which caused front wheels to have excessive negative camber, resulting in some fine handling…
I finally parked it, after letting my brother in law drive it as a high school car, and then sold it to a collector of ‘unique british junk cars’.
Perhaps I should have looked for an old piano for it.
That review is mild compared to the one in MT. I remember the MT scribe describing how the weight of the radio made the dash visibly flex when the car went over bumps. iirc, the scribe took a break, hoping it would refresh his view of the car. It didn’t.
There was an orange Marina sedan still buzzing around Kalamazoo in 1980. I nearly hit it when he decided to turn out of the line of cars trying to make a left into a grocery store, and into the lane of flowing traffic. In 85, there was a blue fastback GT for sale in Kentwood that I passed on my way to work. Neither sighting was as impressive as the mint 71 Austin America I passed frequently when in grad school in 81.
“But it’s foreign, it must be a good quality car!” said the first buyers of Yugos, lol. Same here.
A high school classmate of mine drove one of these in the late 1970s, after his father bought a new Audi Fox. His Marina was a four-door and that configuration made the back seat tolerable for short rides. His car, painted a less than attractive shade of olive green, developed giant rust holes all over the body within three short years. It diverted attention away from my father’s rusty Vega when I parked next to it.
Something old,
something new;
something borrowed,
…were they on glue?
Some people had nice experiences with these cars. There’s a man on the east coast with a ’75 Marina GT, which was purchased by his grandparents. He now has about 200,000 miles on it.
G.T the most overused and wrongly used moniker in automotive history.
Nobody’s mentioned Lou Grant yet?
At this writing only the first season is on imcdb, I remember the last time the show came up someone mentioned him replacing it with a Toyota, and a TE30 or 70 Corolla would’ve offered a similar driving experience with a very different ownership one.
Here he is moments before the piano drops;
It’s easy to go “If only…” when it comes to BMC/BL. I often do it myself.
Those Farina cars were antiques. They should have been retired by the mid-sixties. Austin managed frequent style changes through the fifties, even during the BMC years, but they hung on with these sedans far too long. Unlike the Peugeot 404 which hung on with a similar Farina design, there was no joy for the enthusiast in these.
What BMC needed by the mid sixties was a Farina-replacement cum Cortina-killer. The ADO17 1800 started off to fill this hole, but when Issigonis found he could use the 1800 motor he upsized it into a pretty much nonexistent market segment. Unfortunately there was nobody in management to make him stick with the package; the Farina cars soldiered on, filling the breach in the range without being up to date like the Cortina. Attempts to fill the gap between the 1100/1300 and the 1800 foundered, hamstrung by the insistence that the Maxi used the 1800’s doors.
If you were determined to field a RWD car in this segment, the Morris bits were probably a good place to start, as the Minor and Oxford were good-handling cars in their day, but needed to be refined from their 1948 origins. Good luck with that: from what I’ve read Issigonis regarded the Minor bits as retro-tech, and saw FWD as the way forward, as proved to be correct. Though I’ve never driven a Marina, the experience as a passenger wasn’t encouraging; that was in a 1500 four. By the time us Aussies shoved a 121hp six in there……
The Marina lobbed on the market at a time when the Japanese companies were really getting serious about exports, and Aussies were keen to snap up Japanese quality and reliability. Bad timing for even a good product.
The 1100 was liked well-enough, though fundamentals like inadequate cooling for Oz, or failed hydrolastic units on dirt roads, were never fixed.
But Aussies were completely put off by the 1800, which, for whatever its vastly-better roadability than the locals, was ugly, thirsty and unreliable. Then the stunningly unfinished Kimberely/Tasman burnt things further, and when the conventional RWD Marina quickly turned out to be the most awful of the lot, it sealed the tomb for good (and yes, the rock is still in place 45 years after three days later!)
Truly, the Marina never had a chance, and neither did it deserve to. A cynical and foolish exercise by the out-of-his-depth Stokes.
I always get somewhat perplexed about what it was the British saw appealing about much of their automotive product’s design language around this time, because I clearly don’t seem to get it. Then I think a little harder and realize it isn’t so much a British thing, but rather BLMC specifically that I find to be what I’d call dumpy, for lack of a better word. There are some outliers to my feelings about this, but those exceptions almost exclusively involve Michelotti’s hand, so I digress… Educating myself about this particular example answers much in that it was a compromise on multiple levels, but seriously? It’s not garish, I’ll give it that, but where is the proportion? The sense of finesse? Once it was clear the doors would have to be shared with the saloon that fastback shape needed to be kicked to the curb, post haste. I don’t mind the dashboard.
Speaking of those doors, has there ever been another “coupe” that had to share door stampings with a related four door? I can’t think of any…
“Paul Niedermeyer
I’ve become convinced that any mass-produced car ever built can be kept running almost indefinitely if the owner is able to address their weak spots effectively.”
Yes, with the caveat as long as parts are available. In fact my wife stated at least once, probably about an early Toyota Celica we had about me, “he won’t let it die” This was in the 80’s, yes we are still married and I believe it’s called “damning with faint praise”
The only positive thing I can remember about the Marina is that the local scrap dealer sold me the 1800 engine for 100 Guilders because he did not know for sure that it could be used for an MGB.
Poor Marina, even the nice line drawing that R&T used on the specification page can’t make it look good.
It’s not a line drawing, but a photo, of the test car.
They don’t say so in the text, but they must’ve driven it over a short section of rough dirt, which, as any rural owner soon learned, left most panels behind.
For Road & Track to have been unable to feign enthusiasm about a British car, it must have been fully uncompetitive. A few years earlier, they had an issue that documented both the new Plymouth Cricket and Dodge Colt. It was pretty obvious from the specifications page, from the interior photographs, and from the performance numbers that the Colt was a better equipped, more nicely finished, much higher performing car than the Cricket, but the Cricket was British and the Colt was Japanese. The text made it sound like the Cricket combined the best of British and American car building expertise while the Colt was an ambitious attempt by amateurs who didn’t know the word refinement. Beyond seeing a Cricket peeping out of a garage and driving some later captive Mitsubishi products, I have no experience with 1970 Hillman Avenger or Mitsubishi Lancer. I’m not going to say the Cricket was awful or the Colt was ready for 1980 a decade soon, but it was clear that the Cricket as-tested and photographed was a very austere car with a small engine and the Colt was relatively powerful and well-equipped.
These things are deep and effective drains upon one’s life force, but summoning the small that remains enough to fashion a short comment, my sister had one as a 9 y.o, low-mileage beauty in ’84. For such a new car, it seemed awfully inexpensive, but of course, was instead merely that oft-mistaken similicrum, cheap.
This meant that over a short span of ownership, perhaps 9 months, it lost its clutch, its interior (then exterior) doorhandles, its rear wheel bearings, its entire front end, its starter, its ignition switch, its sunvisors, bootlock, and when not leaking oil for Kuwait, it overheated, though admittedly only the sun came out. It rattled, the dash flexed, the radio jiggled like a bra-less Marilyn, the heater controls jammed, it got maybe 20 mpg, could not exceed 60 mph – the new clutch would slip no matter what – it could not corner, at all, and, as it seems part of the rites, the gearstick would indeed freely leave its post if used without dainty care.
It did have a nice paint job. Or at least, the wrecker who collected it seemed to think so.
My first car was a sedan version of this, in 1982. It was an amalgamation of two. The one which my folks had bought new had severe tin worm, and had of course suffered from most of the above-mentioned defects (including the inability to engage reverse after a stop at the mall on the drive home from the dealer, brand new). But, we found one from a no-salt locale with a good body that the owner had somehow decided was suitable for racing (poor man’s MGB?) and had seized the motor.
It had fairly low gearing, so had acceptable performance in a straight line up to city speeds. Freeway was another adventure altogether. (By the time I got rid of it, at 90 km/h the front end was vibrating so much one didn’t really care to go faster. Even if new parts had been available it wasn’t worth my time to fix!) But hey, I was a teenager with a car, and I nursed that thing through the 4 or 5 years it took for the rusties to consume it. Parts were sourced from 3 more that I bought over the years for on average $125 each.
I had only a vague idea what a P.O.S. it was until I got my ’74 Corona, which was already 13 years old at the time but infinitely superior in all regards except for biodegradability, for which they were neck-to-neck. But my little sister drove that Marina around town for a couple more years.
A friend of mine bought a very used Austin Marina in the early 1980s. I remember him mentioning with some pride not long after buying it that it had the same engine as an MGB. At one point, the fuel filler hose developed hairline cracks and started burping gasoline onto one of the rear brake drums — eventually dissolving the brake shoes. He ran the car without an air cleaner for a period of time and the engine eventually inhaled enough dirt to kill compression in at least one of the cylinders. I don’t recall if he was able to sell his Marina or if it was junked (I don’t think he paid more than a few hundred dollars for it), but he replaced it with a used Volvo 122 that he had much better luck with.
I remember seeing one of these (the same one) in 1976 during my undergraduate days at University of Vermont. Never saw the owner, but it likely was a professor, as it was parked alone alongside of a building I passed daily on campus, on my way from the commuter parking lot (which I don’t remember even being paved, maybe had gravel) to my destination…usually first class of the day, but as I commuted with my sister, sometimes the library or the Billings student center (which I hear is a library again). It certainly stood out, by then in the US British cars were pretty much just sporty cars (including Jaguar sedans), even though run-of-the-mill cars like this were probably common in the home country, they certainly weren’t here in the US in the 70’s. Funny thing is I kind of associate the building it was parked in with that car, even though it has been 30 years since I was last in Burlington (live 1900 miles away)…no excuse, my niece lives in South Burlington.
Anyhow, almost a decade before, my Dad owned a new 1968 Renault R10, which was probably equally unusual in the US. He bought it during our first tour in Vermont, as we lived in Virginia briefly (where he sold the Renault). By the time of our 2nd tour he’d bought a new Subaru DL, which doesn’t seem unusual now, but in 1976 it wasn’t yet very common…and FWD only, as Subaru hadn’t yet adopted AWD for all vehicles. I can’t imagine that the Marina, being a light RWD car was very good in the snow, but in the 70’s cars like this were still more common than FWD…I drove a ’74 Datsun 710 all my undergraduate years, also RWD and light, and it wasn’t that good in the snow, but I made do with it and it treated me pretty well as long as I didn’t do any crazy driving with it.