A bit of a story there. I was trying to get rid of an Austin 1300 which I had bought new tax free in Germany, the most unreliable car I have ever owned. I was offered a fantastic part x deal on the Marina 1800TC, which I took. Kept it 12 months did 17K miles & the only problem was a cracked distributor cap. Quicker than a Capri 2000, but wouldn't stop or go round corners in the wet. Sold it as I was posted back to Germany & there was no 5 star there. Bought a Renault 16TS Auto, which was a great car.That’s bravenot many would admit to having a Marina...
That’s brave
I nearly bought one of those back in 1975 but the garage went and sold it to someone else. I finished up with a 1.3l Marina
I had three of themThat’s brave
We all do daft things when we are young and don’t know any better!
I used to work on the service crew for various rally cars in my youth. On one occasion I was servicing in the Rally of NZ for a guy called Mike Bish who was running a Mini Clubman 1275GT (which won its class incidentally). I was in the only service van - a Morris Marina van fitted with a Datsun 180B engine and gearbox. It went like stink but had a habit of scraping the chrome off the door handles if you cornered too quickly - no doubt due in part to the roof rack loaded with wheels and tyres. There were 2 of us the van supposed to share the driving. We also only had the one van. My companion came down with something on the first day and was basically poorly the entire event so I had to do it all on my own. That was in the days of driving through the night - my longest stint was just over 24 hours on the go. I was knackered by the time we finished.The gearboxes were absolute rubbish. Bedfordshire Police tried to use them but had to give up because the gearboxes broke like carrots. If I remember reverse was their their main issue with them as a police car uses reverse more than the average person.
