Maxi model repaint

It should come as no surprise that as soon as Oxford Diecast released their model of the Austin Maxi I embarked on a repaint to represent my actual car. Read on to discover the trials and tribulations of what should have been a simple repaint project, and see if the finished product looks anything like the real thing...

Smaller wheels make a big difference, but will it look like the real one?

Maxi model review

Oxford Diecast 76MX001 - 1/76 scale Austin Maxi in Tara Green

Regular readers may remember that almost a year ago I expressed my delight that Oxford Diecast had announced a model of the Austin Maxi. It was due for release in the fourth quarter of 2018 so I predicted I would have one in my collection by the end of the year, but Christmas came and went and nothing further was heard about it.

There's a good reason for that: the model has suffered a long delay and has only just been released last week, shortly after the real Maxi's 50th birthday. I was hoping to do this review sooner as I placed my order last Wednesday but a system glitch at the supplier meant I had to wait another week for it to arrive, so at long last and much later than expected I finally have an Oxford Diecast Maxi in my hands for a review. Was it worth the wait?

Not a bad representation of the Maxi

Happy 50th birthday Maxi!

Yesterday marked exactly 50 years since the Austin Maxi was presented to the world on 24th April 1969 in Oporto, Portugal. The Maxi has had a bit of a tough life: born prematurely as a step-child to parents who got together long after it was conceived, it finally came good 18 months later but was then left to fester for a decade before quickly disappearing into oblivion, and is still often mocked but only now finally earning the recognition it deserves. It's hard to believe this brilliant but flawed car is now half a century old, so join me in raising a glass to the humble and often-misunderstood Maxi as it celebrates its 50th birthday...

Unsung heroes: MG Maestro Turbo

The unsung heroes series seems to have become rather more occasional than I intended, but here at last is a new entry. This one has been on my list of candidates for a long time and I was finally spurred into featuring it by attending an event that celebrated its 30th birthday. Consider the Austin Maestro, a thoroughly uninspiring bread-and-butter car driven mainly by pensioners with nothing for petrolheads to get excited about. However, you may be surprised to learn that 30 years ago at the height of the performance wars, someone at Austin-Rover went berserk and added a large dose of spices to that butter, creating the hottest of all hot hatches...

Doesn't look that special, does it?

Motoring Misfits: Austin 'Minor' van

It's been a while since my last blog, and there's no particular reason, just everyday life getting in the way. Today I want to start a new occasional series looking at a subject that fascinates me: the 'motoring misfit', those odd vehicles that while not necessarily bad just didn't seem to have a place in the market, and my first candidate at first glance appears to be something very common.

Look at the van pictured above. Isn't that a Morris Minor, one of the most popular and beloved vehicles of its era, so how on earth can I claim it to be a motoring misfit? Take another look though and you'll see this is a Minor in disguise - there's a crinkly grille and an Austin badge where you'd expect it to say Morris. How come a Morris Minor van ended up wearing the Austin identity? It isn't a DIY job as you might think but a standard production model, so keep reading to find out why its manufacturer felt the need to create this pointless motoring misfit...

A Maxi model

It's been far too long since my last blog as I've been very busy and going through some tough times at work. There has been some very good news amongst all of this though: my prayers for a 1/76 scale model of the Austin Maxi have finally been answered by Oxford Diecast so I am looking forward to adding one to my collection soon. The Maxi has been overlooked by the model manufacturers for far too long and has been requested countless times, not just by me, so the news of its addition to their programme has been received with much enthusiasm and I'm sure it will be a good seller.

At long last, an affordable model Maxi

BL's alternative reality - part 3

Here is the third and final part of my alternative reality that could have seen British Leyland become the pride of Britain with a popular, desirable and well-built range of cars and a world-renowned image, far from the reality of a long-extinct but still tarnished brand and its infamous lineup of failed products. Part 2 took us through the 1980s as the group consolidated the reputation established in the previous decade, so here we take up the story from the 1990s through to the present day with British Leyland still very much alive and well as a dominant force in the global motor industry. Sadly I have no Photoshop skills, otherwise I would create renderings of these cars to illustrate this article as I can picture them in my mind, but read on anyway to see how I envision BL looking today.

BL's alternative reality - part 2

Into the eighties...

This piece is another 'might have been' scenario concerning the British motor industry, which follows on from one published back in February and is best read in conjunction with it for the background to what happens here. That article proposed an alternative 1970s British Leyland range based around the Maxi and Allegro, so this one discusses what might have happened when the group moved into the 1980s as a successful and market-leading British-run company, a far cry from the tattered and troubled reality.

British Leyland, a world-famous brand entering the eighties in excellent shape

A year of Maxi-ing

Time flies when you're having fun, and the weekend just gone marked the first anniversary of buying the Maxi. It's hard to believe a whole year has passed so quickly, so what has happened to the car in that time? It may have been overshadowed in recent weeks by the unexpected arrival of the Renault 6, but the Maxi hasn't been forgotten. To be honest, there really isn't much to report as it just keeps on doing its thing without a fuss.

The Festival of the Unexceptional was its first outing with the new wheeltrims

Making more of the Maxi

British Leyland's alternative reality

 

As a fan and owner of the Austin Maxi, I have spent some time thinking about why it didn't achieve the success it deserved. BL didn't really know what to do with the Maxi and basically pushed it to the sidelines, but with a different attitude it could easily have formed the very heart of the range and spawned many more variants. One of the biggest reasons I came up with for its failure was the simultaneous existence of both the Maxi 1750 and the 1800 Landcrab, which seemed to be a pointless duplication that did nothing other than create internal competition, as the latter was basically the same car but with an older engine and without the benefit of the fifth gear or hatchback. This realisation provided the starting point for an entire train of thought that could have changed the course of British Leyland's history for the better!

The Maxi could have been so much more than this dumpy unloved hatchback

Had the Maxi been used as a direct replacement for the Landcrab, the Princess would then become redundant and extending this thought a little opens up the possibility of its place being taken by a whole series of Maxi-based cars using all of the E-series engine variations that existed in reality, from 1500 right up to 2600cc. The existence of these additional Maxis would then cause other models to develop in a more logical way to fit around them, rationalising the range and providing full market coverage that was equivalent to Ford, with the Allegro and Escort, Maxi and Cortina, and SD1 and Granada pairings all being direct competitors. Here's how things might have turned out in this alternative reality... 

BL Autumn Rally report

Last Sunday (25th September) saw the fourth annual BL Autumn Rally, billed as a celebration of British Leyland's unsung heroes and held at Milton Keynes Museum. We had never been before but as we now own a qualifying car and live just a short distance from the venue it would have been rude not to attend. The show is principally made up of the owners' clubs for the Allegro, Maxi, Landcrab, Metro, Maestro/Montego, Vanden Plas, and new for this year, the Marina and the Rover 200/400 series, plus an open class for all other BMC, BL and Austin-Rover cars. Despite being fairly poorly publicised outside of BL club circles and not even mentioned on the museum website, almost a hundred vehicles were in attendance and it was an enjoyable day out.

Isn't Tara Green a great colour? It even makes the Vanden Plas Allegro look good.

A fortnight of Maxi-ing

Today marks exactly two weeks since the Maxi arrived in its new home, so this is a good time for a quick progress update. My dad has spent almost all of his spare time since then on the car so a lot of little jobs have been done and it is continually getting better, not that it was at all bad to start with. The postman, himself a classic car enthusiast who took a keen interest in our new purchase, has been kept busy with regular deliveries of Maxi parts, which have so far proved surprisingly easy to obtain as many are shared with the Mini. It has now done more than the previous owner's entire annual mileage in just ten days and is in fine fettle mechanically, so confidence is growing with each journey and it is proving itself to have been an excellent purchase, despite breaking the golden rule of never buying a car in the rain!

The first show, three days after collection

It's a Maxi adventure

As you'll probably know from previous posts, we've been looking to buy a classic car, preferably but not necessarily an Austin Maxi, and had narrowly missed out on a fine example a couple of weeks ago. Since then we've been keeping an eye on various car sales websites, but nothing available locally on eBay jumped out at us and the good stuff all seemed to be overpriced and/or hundreds of miles away. Thus disappointed, just on the off-chance we decided to check the Maxi Owners' Club website again in case anything new had been listed. The reward was a car advertised that very morning, which quickly became the latest addition to the Rusty Old Rubbish fleet and means the Maxi urges have been satisfied and we now have a British Leyland car in the garage again after selling the Triumph Dolomite several years ago.

Second time lucky. There's a BL car on the drive once more.

The Maxi that got away

I'm sure all car enthusiasts have been through it many times: the excitement of a potential purchase followed by disappointment when things don't work out and you end up leaving the seller's house without the car. Rusty Old Rubbish may be mostly about old cars but there is one important thing missing as we don't actually own one at the moment, although efforts are being made to rectify that situation. With forthcoming changes in circumstances hopefully meaning the loss of a dull modern car and me being able to drive again soon, the time has come to get another classic, but the first attempt to buy one sadly failed despite our best efforts in slightly odd circumstances. Nonetheless it was an interesting experience and not a complete waste of time like some car viewings turn out to be.

The perfect Maxi that narrowly escaped our grasp

Unsung heroes: Austin Maxi

I haven't championed an unsung hero for a very long time so a new entry is well overdue but this one may seem an odd choice: the Austin Maxi. Have I lost my mind? Surely everyone agrees the Maxi was a terrible car that epitomises everything wrong with British Leyland? Well no actually, I think that reputation is rather unfair and the poor old Maxi deserves a lot more credit than it's given. I've been seeing a few Maxis at shows recently and become quite fond of them, so let me justify myself...

The much maligned Maxi. Pile of crap or unsung hero?

A Perkins peculiarity - the Automatic Diesel Montego

I seem to have neglected this blog for rather too long due to other circumstances. Did anyone miss me? Anyway, I'm back now with another example of my favourite subject, an obscure and unknown car that few know ever existed - I certainly didn't, even after I had seen it with my own eyes!

A scruffy old Montego that hides an interesting secret.

Among the many interesting vehicles in the car park at last year's Festival of the Unexceptional was a rather scruffy looking maroon Rover Montego estate that was just the sort of car that looked right at home at this event but didn't seem that remarkable in this context. I photographed it and then thought no more about it until I came to upload the photo to my Flickr site the next day and checked the vehicle details on the DVLA website. Imagine my puzzlement when it reported "fuel type: diesel, transmission: automatic". I was intrigued but knowing the DVLA data is riddled with silly errors and finding no evidence of such a combination ever existing, I put this down as nothing more than a mistake in the vehicle record but queried it anyway in my Flickr caption. A couple of days later, along came its owner with a very informative comment confirming not only that it is indeed a diesel automatic Montego but it was also an official factory-backed project and not an aftermarket conversion. Even AROnline, the encyclopaedia of all things Austin-Rover that is filled with all sorts of fascinating prototypes, makes no mention of this vehicle, so this may be the only place on the internet where you can read about it. Hard facts are in short supply so I admit this piece includes a lot of speculation and assumptions in the absence of anything definite.