For those interested in old cars.

[johnlambert]

It was the BMC and British Leyland day at the British Motor Museum, I didn't get as much opportunity to photograph stuff as I would have liked.  The show always brings out the largest collection of Austin 3 litres I've ever seen, must be a significant proportion of the remaining roadworthy examples.  Although I suspect the 3 litre was never that good I've got a bit of a soft spot for them.

 

Edited July 1, 2018 by johnlambert

[Horsetan]

.....Although I suspect the 3 litre was never that good I've got a bit of a soft spot for them.

 

IMG_20180701_144315.jpg

 

It would have been alright if it had been ready for production in, say, the late 1950s/early '60s. By the time it came out (1967?) styling trends were already starting to leave it behind.

[coachmann]

A car I would be proud to drive around in is the postwar Wolseley as used by the police in the early 1950's. 

Edited July 1, 2018 by coachmann

[Londontram]

A car I would be proud to drive around in is the postwar Wolseley as used by the police in the early 1950's.

 

 

I have a friend with one. An ex met police car still with a working Winkworth bell

 

Edited July 2, 2018 by Londontram

[PatB]

It was the BMC and British Leyland day at the British Motor Museum, I didn't get as much opportunity to photograph stuff as I would have liked.  The show always brings out the largest collection of Austin 3 litres I've ever seen, must be a significant proportion of the remaining roadworthy examples.  Although I suspect the 3 litre was never that good I've got a bit of a soft spot for them.

 

IMG_20180701_144315.jpg

 

Realistically, the 3-Litre was almost certainly a better car than the Farina Westminster it was designed to replace. Whatever its weaknesses, II strongly suspect that its commercial failure was more due to the UK market being unable to provide enough sales of "non-prestige" big cars like the Austin, the big Fords and the big Humbers (sort of semi-prestige I suppose) and the Vauxhall Cresta to sustain more than a couple of models. It's notable that the only real continuing success in that market was Ford with Zephyr/Zodiac and the subsequent Consul/Granada family, both of which were, perhaps significantly, also available in small-engined versions which, I'd be fairly confident, outsold the big ones. Vauxhall, of course, dropped the Cresta and just up-engined the Victor instead. Given the number I remember seeing not so many years later I don't think the Ventora was any great success either. Thinking about it, Rover did OK with the P6 too but, again, the 2000/2200 provided the bread and butter, with the 3500 being an up-engined middleweight saloon rather than a true big car itself.

 

Big cars just haven't been big sellers in the UK. Or weren't in the late 60s anyway.

Edited July 2, 2018 by PatB

[russ p]

Part of the reason three litre didn't sell well was because it used the central section of the 1800 and with its transmission tunnel it meant it actually had less room than the car two thirds of its price.

Performance wasn't that great either more or less on par with the 1800S which had the most powerful factory B series engine ( something that sits badly with MGB owners!) So for the extra money all you got was a bigger boot and a very complicated suspension system.

For a car that sold so badly there seems to be quite a lot of survivors

[coachmann]

Maybe people forget the reality of motoring in the 1950's, 1960's and 70's. Engines were hardly frugal and so 2 litre cars tended to go cheap s/h and were snapped up by boy racers. Even a 1.6 engine was greedy by todays standards. hence the popularity of the Fiesta type cars with 1.1 engines. The diesel common rail engine opened my eyes to power + economy around 2004 and I have only owned one petrol engine since then.

[Rugd1022]

 

Big cars just haven't been big sellers in the UK. Or weren't in the late 60s anyway.

 

I agree on this up to a point, but the Jag MkX / 420G was a consistent seller from 1961 to 1970, partly I suspect because there wasn't really anything else like it on the market. It was suppsed to have been killed off in '69 but Browns Lane couldn't build the new XJ6 quick enough so it was kept going until '70. At the time it was the widest saloon car anyone could buy in Britain. The Rover P5 was probably the next best thing but sales were already starting to slip by '65 ish despite continuous improvements, it wasn't as roomy inside as the big Jag but had the comfort factor in spades. Dropping the ex-Buick V8 into the bodyshell and adding the rakish Rostyle wheels in '67 extended its lifespan by six years but sales tailed off by '72 and it was quietly dropped in June '73.

[PatB]

I agree on this up to a point, but the Jag MkX / 420G was a consistent seller from 1961 to 1970, partly I suspect because there wasn't really anything else like it on the market. It was suppsed to have been killed off in '69 but Browns Lane couldn't build the new XJ6 quick enough so it was kept going until '70. At the time it was the widest saloon car anyone could buy in Britain. The Rover P5 was probably the next best thing but sales were already starting to slip by '65 ish despite continuous improvements, it wasn't as roomy inside as the big Jag but had the comfort factor in spades. Dropping the ex-Buick V8 into the bodyshell and adding the rakish Rostyle wheels in '67 extended its lifespan by six years but sales tailed off by '72 and it was quietly dropped in June '73.

 

I was deliberately excluding Jags as they fell at the lower end of the prestige market rather than the upper end of everyone else (IMHO; I accept that the existence and position of any dividing line is open to debate). If you could afford a new Jaguar you could probably afford to fuel, tax and insure it without worrying overmuch. OTOH, those in the market for the products of Ford, Vauxhall, BMC/BL etc. may have needed to be more thrifty. As a corollary, if you had the budget to fuel, tax and insure a 3 litre saloon, you might very well be in a position to stretch to a Jaguar with only a little more effort, so why would you buy a Ford/Austin/Vauxhall with the same badge on it as Joe Bloggs' car next door?

 

I'm not saying that the big cars didn't sell. Clearly they did. My point is more that the non-prestige big car market in the UK just wasn't big enough for all the manufacturers at the time to offer a model and sell enough to make money on it. Only Ford seem to have really succeeded post ~1970. The Austin bombed as even BL seem to have recognised the wisdom expressed by russ p above, and concentrated on the Land Crab and its Wedge successor, providing both with an upengined option, which, if I remember the relevant Which? magazine tests correctly, posted almost identical performance figures to the 3-Litre (103 mph top speed sticks in my mind, which was also the top whack of the Westminster when they tested it). Vauxhall, as previously mentioned, dropped the Cresta at the end of the PC's life. Humber disappeared except as a badge-engineered Rootes Arrow. Rover dropped the P5 and didn't introduce another true big car until the SD1 which also came with small engined options. Triumph stuck to the 2000, even if they did put a long-stroke crank in it to create the 2500. They could have probably built a 2000 On Steroids to take the Stag lump but, given that it would have been internal competition for Rover and maybe the cheaper Jags it wasn't going to happen.

 

I suppose it could be argued that the British manufacturers could have sold big saloons abroad. Where though? Australia and Canada were making plenty of their own by 1970. Why would a US buyer want one when they could buy a homegrown really big car? Mainland Europe was probably an even more hostile environment for big engines than the UK at the time, and any market that there might have been would have been adequately covered by the likes of Volvo, Mercedes (neither of which seem to have been anything like as prestigious in their home countries as in Britain), Ford Germany (surprise surprise) and maybe FIAT with their bigger models that one sees in 60s Italian films but almost nowhere else .

 

So I conclude that, below Jaguar level, there was only room for one or two players in the UK big car market. Ford got the lion's share and Rover eventually picked up the rest, and even they had to offer economy versions of their respective offerings to pay the bills. Something like the Austin 3-Litre which didn't have much major component commonality with its Land-Crab parent, or with anything else from BMC/Leyland UK for that matter, wasn't going to be well placed to succeed.

 

Apropos of nothing very much, I think the last Austin 3-Litre I saw in the metal was a rather scruffy example, with the bodgiest Rover V8 transplant I think I've ever seen, at the Yeovil  Festival of Transport back in the mid '80s. Lack of clearance under the bonnet had been solved by cutting a slot down each side of the panel with a blunt angle-grinder, lifting the centre section by 6' or so, and tack welding in triangles of (unpainted) galvanised iron to fill up the resulting gaps. Man but it was ugly, even by my standards, and I normally like ugly .

[johnlambert]

I agree on this up to a point, but the Jag MkX / 420G was a consistent seller from 1961 to 1970, partly I suspect because there wasn't really anything else like it on the market. It was suppsed to have been killed off in '69 but Browns Lane couldn't build the new XJ6 quick enough so it was kept going until '70. At the time it was the widest saloon car anyone could buy in Britain. The Rover P5 was probably the next best thing but sales were already starting to slip by '65 ish despite continuous improvements, it wasn't as roomy inside as the big Jag but had the comfort factor in spades. Dropping the ex-Buick V8 into the bodyshell and adding the rakish Rostyle wheels in '67 extended its lifespan by six years but sales tailed off by '72 and it was quietly dropped in June '73.

 

Having spoken to some friends in the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust, the Jaguar MkX/420G never achieved the sales volumes that Jaguar hoped for.

 

As for the Austin 3 litre, they always seem a bit austere inside when compared with the Westminster, which probably didn't help sales.  All the research I've done also suggests that the new, seven-bearing straight six used in the 3 litre and MGC offered no benefit over the older C-series six-cylinder engine used in the big 'farina saloons (and the Austin Healey 3000).

[PatB]

Of course, something the British industry did do very well, and quite successfully too, so presumably there was a decent sized market, was the sporting small/medium RWD saloon, with all the big players offering at least one or two variants at one time or another, pretty much all of which were of at least some merit. Not that any of that's really relevant to why the Austin 3-Litre was a flop.

[shortliner]

I.

 

. Lack of clearance under the bonnet had been solved by cutting a slot down each side of the panel with a blunt angle-grinder, lifting the centre section by 6' or so, and tack welding in triangles of (unpainted) galvanised iron to fill up the resulting gaps. Man but it was ugly, even by my standards, and I normally like ugly .

I bet that restricted the drivers view an awful lot though!

Edited July 2, 2018 by shortliner

[Rugd1022]

Pat and John, thanks for those informative replies. I know the big Jag wasn't a massive seller, probably significantly less than the 90,000 or so Mk2 saloons but they seemed to be steady sellers both here and abroad for the nine years they were in production. Wasn't it a direct replacement for the outdated looking MkIX, which all these years later still looks like it should be being thrown around corners by greasy haired villains in long forgotten black and white British crime thrillers of the '50s. By 1961 Jaguar certainly needed something much more swish and modern looking, particularly so with the E-Type heading for the showrooms, the RR Silver Shadow wouldn't appear for another four years so there wasn't much else of comparable size and stature to beat it really. one particular aspect of the MkX / 420G I've always liked is the way the front of the car leans forward so purposefully, it still looks good today.

 

As for the P5Bs, they were due to be replaced in '71 but the P8 project was pulled at the last minute, although size wise it was more in the P6 class. The P5B carried on into '73 with the help of a batch or two of Government orders but these were just about the last gasp for the range, by then a fifteen year old design despite the facelift and power upgrades in '67. If you were looking for a large wafty luxury palace on wheels in the early '70s, where would you go after looking at the P5B and still be left wanting more? The XJ6 / XJ12 range were in a class of their own in some ways so the next step up the ladder could only be the Bentley T1 or RR Silver Shadow - I can't think of anything else built in the UK at the time which would fill the gap adequately between the Solihull and Crewe built offerings. 

Edited July 2, 2018 by Rugd1022

[PatB]

I bet that restricted the drivers view an awful lot though!

 

And I retyped that symbol at least 3 times, trying to get " instead of ' too. looks like my Shift key coordination needs some work .

[russ p]

I was deliberately excluding Jags as they fell at the lower end of the prestige market rather than the upper end of everyone else (IMHO; I accept that the existence and position of any dividing line is open to debate). If you could afford a new Jaguar you could probably afford to fuel, tax and insure it without worrying overmuch. OTOH, those in the market for the products of Ford, Vauxhall, BMC/BL etc. may have needed to be more thrifty. As a corollary, if you had the budget to fuel, tax and insure a 3 litre saloon, you might very well be in a position to stretch to a Jaguar with only a little more effort, so why would you buy a Ford/Austin/Vauxhall with the same badge on it as Joe Bloggs' car next door?

 

I'm not saying that the big cars didn't sell. Clearly they did. My point is more that the non-prestige big car market in the UK just wasn't big enough for all the manufacturers at the time to offer a model and sell enough to make money on it. Only Ford seem to have really succeeded post ~1970. The Austin bombed as even BL seem to have recognised the wisdom expressed by russ p above, and concentrated on the Land Crab and its Wedge successor, providing both with an upengined option, which, if I remember the relevant Which? magazine tests correctly, posted almost identical performance figures to the 3-Litre (103 mph top speed sticks in my mind, which was also the top whack of the Westminster when they tested it). Vauxhall, as previously mentioned, dropped the Cresta at the end of the PC's life. Humber disappeared except as a badge-engineered Rootes Arrow. Rover dropped the P5 and didn't introduce another true big car until the SD1 which also came with small engined options. Triumph stuck to the 2000, even if they did put a long-stroke crank in it to create the 2500. They could have probably built a 2000 On Steroids to take the Stag lump but, given that it would have been internal competition for Rover and maybe the cheaper Jags it wasn't going to happen.

 

I suppose it could be argued that the British manufacturers could have sold big saloons abroad. Where though? Australia and Canada were making plenty of their own by 1970. Why would a US buyer want one when they could buy a homegrown really big car? Mainland Europe was probably an even more hostile environment for big engines than the UK at the time, and any market that there might have been would have been adequately covered by the likes of Volvo, Mercedes (neither of which seem to have been anything like as prestigious in their home countries as in Britain), Ford Germany (surprise surprise) and maybe FIAT with their bigger models that one sees in 60s Italian films but almost nowhere else .

 

So I conclude that, below Jaguar level, there was only room for one or two players in the UK big car market. Ford got the lion's share and Rover eventually picked up the rest, and even they had to offer economy versions of their respective offerings to pay the bills. Something like the Austin 3-Litre which didn't have much major component commonality with its Land-Crab parent, or with anything else from BMC/Leyland UK for that matter, wasn't going to be well placed to succeed.

 

Apropos of nothing very much, I think the last Austin 3-Litre I saw in the metal was a rather scruffy example, with the bodgiest Rover V8 transplant I think I've ever seen, at the Yeovil  Festival of Transport back in the mid '80s. Lack of clearance under the bonnet had been solved by cutting a slot down each side of the panel with a blunt angle-grinder, lifting the centre section by 6' or so, and tack welding in triangles of (unpainted) galvanised iron to fill up the resulting gaps. Man but it was ugly, even by my standards, and I normally like ugly .

BL actually built two 'three litres' with rover V8s not sure for what purpose but they were apparently quite well liked by the senior management which ended up using them.

Not sure if either survived

[Southern Steve]

Apparently the MkX/420G didn't sell well because they were just too big for the average single garage. 

 

 

If you got the thing in there, you couldn't open the door to get out!

 

 

This also accounts for the low survival rate, they all rotted away as they had to stand outside and we all know how 60's Jags rotted.

[Southern Steve]

Incidentally the Austin 3 litre did share it's engine, and gearbox come to that, with the ill fated MGC.

Edited July 2, 2018 by Southern Steve

[Rugd1022]

Incidentally the Austin 3 litre did share it's engine, and gearbox come to that, with the ill fated MGC.

 

It's a pity the MGC gained a poor reputation, partly caused (so I've read) by the examples handed to the press for road teats having incorrect tyre pressures, causing the handling to be affected in an already nose heavy car. 

[Southern Steve]

I'm an MG man, but the MGC was a lemon, the new 3 litre engine came in too bulky and too heavy, and had no more power the old C series unit used in the Austi-Healey 3000.


Apparently the MG chassis engineers knew it wouldn't go round corners or perform like a 3 litre sports car should!

 

 

 

The '73 MGB V8 was a far better all round car, but had the misfortune to be launched as the fuel crisis caused by the middle east bit. Plus it only ever made available in the FHC GT shell.

 

It also had to take the detuned Rangr-Rover 137bhp unit as opposed to the 155bhp P6S lump. It's rumoured Jaguar were to blame for this as if it had had the more powerfull engine it would have been faster than the current V12 E type!

Edited July 2, 2018 by Southern Steve

[johnlambert]

Pat and John, thanks for those informative replies. I know the big Jag wasn't a massive seller, probably significantly less than the 90,000 or so Mk2 saloons but they seemed to be steady sellers both here and abroad for the nine years they were in production. Wasn't it a direct replacement for the outdated looking MkIX, which all these years later still looks like it should be being thrown around corners by greasy haired villains in long forgotten black and white British crime thrillers of the '50s. By 1961 Jaguar certainly needed something much more swish and modern looking, particularly so with the E-Type heading for the showrooms, the RR Silver Shadow wouldn't appear for another four years so there wasn't much else of comparable size and stature to beat it really. one particular aspect of the MkX / 420G I've always liked is the way the front of the car leans forward so purposefully, it still looks good today.

 

A little piece of trivia that may amuse Jaguar fans and anyone with a fondness for the 1960s Thunderbirds series.  When Gerry Anderson was designing FAB1, Lady Penelope's six-wheeled Rolls-Royce, he was inspired by 1960s exotics like the Facel Vega and, of course, Rolls-Royce; as well as the Jaguar MkX that Anderson owned.  Once you look at the silhouette of the MkX and FAB1; the raked forward nose, curved belt line and bubble-style roofline; you wonder how you didn't spot the similarites before.

[alastairq]

I'm surprised the MGB didn't get O series power....

 

Reference the C?   Wasn't the GT deemed a stronger shell?

[Rugd1022]

Talking of 'Fab', not the best illustration I know, but here's a rare glimpse of Beatle George's blacked out Radford Cooper S 'LGF 695D' in '66 as he closes the gate to his sprawling bungalow in Esher on a nosey parker fan...

 

 

Well known as a proper petrolhead, it was in this particular little pocket rocket that George acquired his first speeding fine, whereupon he was summoned to court and asked to cough up the princely sum of six whole pounds and told not to do it again, the ruddy 'ooligan. 

 

While John and Yoko were tucked up in bed in Amsterdam in the name of peace their RR Phantom V (John's second one) tried its very best to fill the car park...

 

 

His first one 'FJB 111C' received a lot of attention when he had it redecorated in the Spring of '67... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Southern Steve]

I'm surprised the MGB didn't get O series power....

 

Reference the C?   Wasn't the GT deemed a stronger shell?

 

The 1981 model year MGB was due to have O-Series power but the model was canned to give the TR7 a clear run in the market, and we all know how that finished up!

 

 

 

 

The MGB roadster shell was a fantastically strong shell with its massive bulkhead and 3 piece sill design and could have taken the V8 easily. The real reason was that the BL product planners thought the US were going to outlaw open top cars, so the V8 was only ever available on the home market.

 

 

Additionally the MGB roadster did suffer with lots of wind noise from the hood, not good in the  potentially much faster V8.

Edited July 3, 2018 by Southern Steve

[russ p]

The injected O series that found its way into the MG montego and maestro was allegedly developed for the B.

I also had a 16v O series I fitted to a maestro that was developed for the TR7.

I didn't knows it at the time thought it was a R820 prototype but they get mentioned in the TR7 book by David Knowles

[Horsetan]

Looks like I'm going to invest a few quid in one of those pocket-sized jump starter packs. A 5-hour traditional charge of the CX's battery only seems to last just over a week.....