Practically Classics Forum

sierra3dr wrote:Don't know what it is,but it's on here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwOl8EN5n8M

They are known as gerberas, large daisy like flowers. but if you mean that awful wreck of an excuse for British Leyland's finest, that my friend is what you call an Austin Maxi.

this is a maxi
http://images.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=h ... AQrQMIJzAD

Good point. but that's not a Maxi: This is a Maxi.

That's not just any Maxi either, it's an early HL, when they still had padded Rexine over the bare wood dashboard that lesser models had to cope with. Note also the factory fit 3 spoke aluminium steering wheel, its largest holes exactly the right size to trap the driver's son's fingers and cause an agonising trip to casualty, where the nurse had to come out to the car park and rub butter all over the young lad's fingers before very gently pulling [the fingers] out of the wheel.
SJR421N is still alive and hasn't rusted away. It's in one of the steadings awaiting a fresh coat of Damask Red and some suitable replacement to be found for the seats' central Brian Nylon sections, that have crumbled away since it was last on the road. That car was one of the last of the Hydrolastic versions which means that its suspension still works too, and its engine was one of those that was better then the one before and the three that came after, from the series of eight that Dad ran as company cars and the four that Dad & I have had between us since.
There's not much to dislike about a straight, early (with Hydrolastic please!) Maxi and the HL's performance was genuinely impressive in its time, don't let us knock the cars just because some bloke in the bar said that they're rubbish. That bloke was talking bollocks and probably hadn't even driven a Maxi because his neighbours had always driven Fords and if they were good enough for him next door, then they were good enough for Mr Dull O'Thinking too.

OK, so FTN493W, a very late Maxi 2 HLS, was rotten by its second birthday, always lost pressure from the driver's side of its (damnable Hydrasag) suspension and had the porous engine repaired and liners fitted under warranty, so there was the one bad one, but the rest were all rather good.

JPB wrote:There's not much to dislike about a straight, early (with Hydrolastic please!) Maxi and the HL's performance was genuinely impressive in its time, don't let us knock the cars just because some bloke in the bar said that they're rubbish.

What bloke? WMG ???T I can't remember the digits, our Maxi was bought, brand new on August 1st 1978, from Bonallack BL dealer in Forest Gate, East London. It cost almost three and a half grand. We had it for five years, it was nothing but trouble, and the reason why I never bought another car in the BL range. Worst thing that happened was instead of a cam belt it had a double chain (I think it was double,) that snapped and sent chain links flying around the engine. That car spent as much time in dock as it did on the road.
It was a dreadful indictment of our motoring heritage. Under investment, poorly designed and shoddy workmanship. Compare that car to the brand new Golf I bought her in 1996. The only problem with the Golf is it had to have a new wing when Mr Nobody customised the old one in the supermarket carpark. 20 years we've had that Golf, it's not very attractive and gets raspberries from pundits like Clarkson, well it is a MK4 so I'll let him off, but it gets the job done.

Although I can now see that the maxi was a pretty clever design for its time, I hated the one my parents had - HJT 677V. It was beige and just awful, I much preferred walking home from school in the pi$$ing rain that be seen in it! Oddly enough, my grandads maxi - PLH 990R was better, his was blue with a black interior and it also had the "sporty" 3 spoke steering wheel.

GHT wrote:that my friend is what you call an Austin Maxi.

I thought it was a Maxi,but google images of the dash didn't look the same

found one
http://retrorides.proboards.com/thread/ ... -beigeness

sierra3dr wrote:found one
http://retrorides.proboards.com/thread/ ... -beigeness

Hmm, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, never more so than when mistaking what would have been a Hydragas Maxi for a Hydrolastic one. If he'd only fitted some valves and adjusted the rebound by increasing the gas pressure, chances are that the subframe would have fallen apart much more gradually! And he'd then have got away with that very slight drop..
And while I'm at it; that dash is right for an HL, they weren't "all black", the Rexine was colour coded (approximately..) to the centre part of the seats, sub-HL cars had bare wood and earliest Maxis had a dash that sloped away out of sight and resembled the one found in early MK3 Cortinas. It's always good to see a nice HL..

Has anyone got/had/likes the Amalgamated Drawing Office project number 16? That was the working title BMC gave to the 1100/1300 range. A neighbour of mine, where I lived in Northants years ago, had all six of the British built marques. Some were built elsewhere, like Italy and Belgium.
This neighbour was mad about the marque, so much so, that he had a mini-showroom built in his garden to house his collection. He had the Austin, MG, Morris, Princess Vanden Plas, Riley & Wolseley. They were all immaculate, but the Vanden Plas really was something else, better than new.
At the time, about 30 years ago, I was too busy climbing the greasy pole to care much about anything but work, and probably, though not deliberately, gave that impression when visiting our neighbour.
The reason for posting this is because I saw an 1100, in Police livery, last Sunday. It jolted the reminisce of my neighbour, to which, in the internet age, I was able to look up the marque online. Sorry neighbour, but I'm still not impressed, even though 2.4 million buyers were. Of that 2.4M, just 16007 were converted from the MG to the Vanden Plas. It was the pinnacle of BMC's production, the subsequent Marinas & Allegros fared far less well and UK sales of the home brand declined dramatically. The Maxi and Land-crab, were born out of the technology that went into, first the Mini and then the 1100/1300. Today, all those front wheel drive, cavernous interior cars, are loved by enthusiasts, but if they were really any good, why didn't the buying public, at the time, support them?