Worst cars in history or was British Leyland as bad as they say?

Lucky13 · Jun 8, 2009

What's your views?

ToughOmbre · Jun 8, 2009

Worse!

And the TR7 epitomized the garbage they produced.

This from Time Magazine.....

"The shape of things to come" quickly became the shape that came and went, in a great cloud of "good riddance." The doorstop-shaped TR7, and its rare V8-powered sibling TR8, were the last Triumphs sold in America and among the last the company made before it folded its tents in 1984. The trouble was not necessarily the engineering, or even the peculiar design, which looked fit to split firewood. It was that the cars were so horribly made. The thing had more short-circuits than a mixing board with a bong spilled on it. The carburetors had to be constantly romanced to stay in balance. Timing chains snapped. Oil and water pumps refused to pump, only suck. The sunroof leaked and the concealable headlights refused to open their peepers. One owner reports that the rear axle fell out. How does that happen? It was as if British Leyland's workers were trying to sabotage the country's balance of trade.

TO

Coors9 · Jun 8, 2009

jaguar e type, one ugly car .

pbfoot · Jun 8, 2009

Did anyone ever try and use the defroster or demist on Brit cars of the period , absolutely useless you would have more luck with a candle

Airframes · Jun 8, 2009

The only good thing that came out of the factories when the independant companies became the Government owned BMC, and then British Leyland, was the exit road! Still, the TR7, in the hands of Tony Pond, managed to win some rallies in the late '70's.

Sweb · Jun 8, 2009

ToughOmbre said:
Worse!

And the TR7 epitomized the garbage they produced.

This from Time Magazine.....

"The shape of things to come" quickly became the shape that came and went, in a great cloud of "good riddance." The doorstop-shaped TR7, and its rare V8-powered sibling TR8, were the last Triumphs sold in America and among the last the company made before it folded its tents in 1984. The trouble was not necessarily the engineering, or even the peculiar design, which looked fit to split firewood. It was that the cars were so horribly made. The thing had more short-circuits than a mixing board with a bong spilled on it. The carburetors had to be constantly romanced to stay in balance. Timing chains snapped. Oil and water pumps refused to pump, only suck. The sunroof leaked and the concealable headlights refused to open their peepers. One owner reports that the rear axle fell out. How does that happen? It was as if British Leyland's workers were trying to sabotage the country's balance of trade.

TO

Funny. I used to call it a rolling door stop. A co-worker of mine bought one in 1980 or 81 (I forget) thinking it was a cool looking car. I didn't agree with him. He was less than mechanically inclined to say the least. When the car started having problems he got everything fixed and traded it in. I think Triumph's departure from the TR6 design family to the TR7 was the biggest disappointment for me. Even now I keep an eye peeled for a decent TR6 or even GT6. They were mechanic's cars (tinkerers). Car buffs who had to keep their fingernails dirty to stay happy thoroughly enjoyed the earlier TRs and Spitfires. I'm one of them.

Bringing things more up to date I feel Ford bastardized the Jaguar thoroughbred look into Taurus offspring. I mean, Jaguar was slowly doing that by itself but Ford just jumped in with little acknowledgement of years of tradition and with total abandonment of humility and regard started Sable-izing the stable. What were they thinking? People want Ford-looking Jaguars? If I might digress a moment there was a British expression during the war critical of American servicemen there suggesting the only problem with the Americans was they "are overpaid, oversexed and over here". In the case of Jaguar I couldn't agree more.

vikingBerserker · Jun 8, 2009

Ok, as a former owner of a TR7, I was in the best physical shape I'd ever been in on account of having to the danr thing all the time. But I have to admit it did wonders for my knowledge of working on cars. I did always like they way they looked.

IMHO also having owned a 97 XJR (deep sigh) Ford did wonders at first with Jaguar, but then they did try to turn it into a mass production car and it really lost a lot of charm and you are right, they started tp became Tuarus'.

vikingBerserker · Jun 8, 2009

Coors9 said:
jaguar e type, one ugly car .

Ok, that's just blasphemy!!!

parsifal · Jun 9, 2009

well, I owned an austin healey sprite MkIII for 12 years. For 8 years it was my only car, and i drove it every day to and from work. It did over 120000 mies on two engines (and I was not kind to that thing, given that it was race tuned with over sized valves and a scott blower attached, able to make 0-60 in under 6 seconds, and handled like it was onrails on account of its heavy duty sway bars and hard as a hell springs and shocks). It was basically a go-kart with registratiion plates. Once had a very memorable little derby with an Alpha Spider from Canberra to Sydney,and drove the thing continously for 9 days doing the coast to coast drive across the nullabor. The thing never let me down, gotme so many girls it was not funny,and shamed more than a few so called american muscle cars under the right conditions.

I admit my sprite was an ex-racing machine, de-tuned to be street legal, but it was still a basically sound motor vehicle. The thing I remember the most about it was the smell...a sort of mixtureof oil and petrol with rubber thrown in....a real car not like these plastique pieces of Cr8p we get nowadays

The problem with brit cars was that they were designed with repair in mind, whereas your average piece of Jap Cr*p is designed and built with planned obsolesence in mind. Basically Japanese cars will go longe without repair, and wont break down because the systems and QAis better,but the brit car can be repaireagainand again, and still come backfor more.....case in point...my sprite is owned by a friend, and afer 45 years on the road is still going strong. i wishedI hadnever old it to be honest......

Colin1 · Jun 9, 2009

Leyland were dreadful
the Trade Unions destroyed the multi-skilled ethic that the apprenticeships were instilling in the grass-roots members of the UK car industry; you couldn't do this or that any more, that was someone's job you were stealing.
From being a platform on which to build world-competitive autos, it became a platform for keeping people in paid work, who always had their niche in the build process, heavily protected by short-sighted Trade Unions and thus over-burgeoning the company's outlay with salaries for 'workers' that weren't really needed.
The other and equally damaging side to the coin is that these weren't people who were interested in car-building, or even cars; turn up, do your quota, end of the week, get paid - the Trade Unions would secure your niche for life and if they couldn't, down tools, everybody out.
That was evident in the build-quality of the cars leaving the Cowley plant and while the Trade Unions were myopically ensuring needless-jobs-for-life they couldn't see the long-term damage that they were doing to the UK car industry; the Japanese were moving into the disaffected ground being abandoned by former British car owners.

My first car was a Morris Marina coupe (nowadays called a hatchback), it was shocking; I must have replaced every part under the bonnet and elsewhere. Twice.

Negotiating a roundabout, gearshift came off in my hand. Imagine the look on my girlfriend's face when I handed it to her and said "Hold this, I need to pull over"

On the M27 into Southampton and the bonnet flew up and wrapped itself around the windscreen/roof line; getting that over to the hard shoulder in traffic was wing-and-a-prayer territory...

Voltage regulators (Marinas had dynamos) seemed to be sitting in a drain path so they needed seeing to regularly.

Suspension made out of marshmallows and rear leaf-spring (yep, horse and cart technology) snapped regularly.

Glider · Jun 9, 2009

I hate saying it but we had two cars. my first car was a Maxi and later on I had a Maestro. We owned each of them for about seven to eight years but to their credit they were reliable. By the time they had done 90,000 miles they were heaps and loads of things didn't work but the engines did and we still got from A to B. A couple of years after we sold the Maestro we saw it in a car park so it was still going strong.
After the maestro we bought a Rover 214 but that was basically a rebadged Honda and was a big improvement.

trackend · Jun 9, 2009

Leyland was the same as Rootes and other multi brand car companies too many models chasing too smaller market
Jag E Type is recognised as a design Icon it only went pear shaped when they had to fit hideous oversized bumpers to meet north American safety regs.
Trs before the seven were great cars I stll like the 4A with the surrey top the 7 was not good but then the Stag was a total dog also, I can think of many cars that were worse than those produced at Leylands. Howabout the 1965 Vauxhall Victor 6 months from new to rotten heap of rust some even left the plant with rust starting to show as for Ugly Triumph Mayflower beats even the Edsel

I cant believe anyone could call the E type ugly

Coors9 · Jun 9, 2009

lol....Here's a sweet car. Shelby 427 Cobra

The Basket · Jun 9, 2009

The E type wasnt ugly.

BL were no worse than what was coming out of Italy and France.

Alfa Romeo? Lancia?

I rest my case.

The Shelby Cobra was based on a british car.

The TR7 to me has always been cool. If you see a lot of the more modern coupes then they do seem to have been a little TR7esque.

Coors9 · Jun 9, 2009

Yea, He took it and fixed it.... Always liked the TR6

Colin1 · Jun 9, 2009

The Basket said:
Alfa Romeo? Lancia?

I rest my case

On what?
Alfa Romeo and Lancia still exist

Butters · Jun 9, 2009

I can understand that the E-type Jag might not be someone's favorite car (After all, children do fall and bang their heads on a regular basis...) but to call the 'ultimate crumpet catcher of all time' (Stirling Moss, IIRC) ugly is just mind-boggling.

He was jokin, right?

JL

PS: I had an opportunity to buy a E-type Coupe when I was 20, but I wanted a rag-top. Before I found one, the investment collector rage started and I could never afford one. It still hurts...

The Basket · Jun 9, 2009

Colin1 said:
On what?
Alfa Romeo and Lancia still exist

The question was whether UK cars of the 70's were bad.
They were not bad in comparison to other cars of the period from other countries.

Such as from Lancia or Alfa Romeo.

The question was not whether Alfa exist today.

Njaco · Jun 9, 2009

I dunno.

I owned a 1969 Land Rover 69 for 10 years and loved it.

My father owned a 63 TR 3 and loved.

on the other hand.......

I owned a '74 Fiat Spyder 850 and a '74 Fiat Spyder 124 - the WORST cars I've ever touched!!!!

ToughOmbre · Jun 9, 2009

Njaco said:
I dunno.

I owned a 1969 Land Rover 69 for 10 years and loved it.

My father owned a 63 TR 3 and loved.

on the other hand.......

I owned a '74 Fiat Spyder 850 and a '74 Fiat Spyder 124 - the WORST cars I've ever touched!!!!

Chris, the '63 TR3 was before British Leyland, and was a sharp car, and I think the '69 Land Rover was before (not sure) as well.

You are absolutely right about about the Fiats, self-destruction machines!

Worst car I ever owned was a 1976 Datsun 280Z. Very fast (did 135 mph), but a rust bucket!

TO

Worst cars in history or was British Leyland as bad as they say?

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