Tell me about British Leyland
Discussion
//j17 said:
Because the car only came with a 12 month warranty, so you made sure to get shot of it before that ran out! 11 months gave you time to get the car back from the 'owner' and passed in to the second hand trade, with room to cover people being ill/on holiday/etc.
That makes sense! saaby93 said:
//j17 said:
djohnson said:
They’d done a deal with them which meant each company car was changed every 11 months (for some reason).
Because the car only came with a 12 month warranty, so you made sure to get shot of it before that ran out! 11 months gave you time to get the car back from the 'owner' and passed in to the second hand trade, with room to cover people being ill/on holiday/etc.Once the cars hit the used car market any problems had been sorted
j4r4lly said:
I had a 1983 Metro 1.0 HLE for around 5 years and 60,000 miles. I sold my Golf 1.5 GLS to buy it as my wife had just passed her test (in a BSM Metro) and we thought it would be better for her to build some experience in a similar car.
While the Metro wasn't the best thing to drive, it did prove to be totally dependable and very cheap to run and maintain. As well as all the usual running around doing shopping, commuting and school duties, we drove to Devon from East London at least 4 times a year, drove to Southern Ireland several times and traveled all over the UK. It was terrible on fuel no matter how it was driven, averaging high 20's to low 30's, but other than consumables and a timing chain swap, it was a brilliant little car.
I learnt to drive in a Metro and my family tried to buy one as a second car. I say tried because literally every single one we looked at was in the process of rusting through around the petrol filler cap (at around the 10yr old point).While the Metro wasn't the best thing to drive, it did prove to be totally dependable and very cheap to run and maintain. As well as all the usual running around doing shopping, commuting and school duties, we drove to Devon from East London at least 4 times a year, drove to Southern Ireland several times and traveled all over the UK. It was terrible on fuel no matter how it was driven, averaging high 20's to low 30's, but other than consumables and a timing chain swap, it was a brilliant little car.
Frankthered said:
AW111 said:
coppice said:
The Italians made wonderful cars badly and the Japanese made bad cars wonderfully.
Guess which way round they did it?
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Good times - I had a 416Gti delivered in 1990 and drove it 46000 miles over the next ten months. Servicing was fairly frequent but there was never any requirement for anything other than routine maintenance. Nothing fell off, stopped working, or let me down. Great car and comfy too. Quick enough.Such a step up from the 216SE efi I had just a few years earlier, that had paint drips on the c pillar, a loose fixing within the dash (rolling around when cornering), and numerous minor irritations that were built in. Nice wood features however. And a real leather gear lever gaitor.
Had they continued at that level (good competitive cars built to consistent high standards) then who knows what they might have achieved? Actually the R75 has many good points...
anonymous said:
[redacted]
We need to hear more from you.As a car enthusiast in the 60’s and owner in the 70’s, I lost interest in BL products when they stopped building the TR6 and the E Type Jaguar. My father had Jags from 1959 until 1984, and latterly only through loyalty. The XJ6 was a bag of usually rusting rubbish from the mid 70’s, and unusable for day to day business by the early 80’s. The only sensible thing to do was buy a Mercedes saloon. I bought a VW Golf GTi which was in another world from what BL could produce, and a Fiat X1/9, which, if prone to rust and not partial to exposure to water, was a car of such sublime quality that BL could no more have produced a competitor than launched a Mars mission.
BL was an embryonic Trabant, or Eastern European manufacturer, which people only bought at gunpoint, for all the same reasons. Politicians and civil servants can no more run a car manufacturer than respond to a pandemic or ‘fight Climate Change’. Now or then. If you want to know what it was like, just look at this shambolic inefficient country now, obsessed with past glories, a few good people but a hell of a lot of leadswingers, led by overprivileged twits who are only interested in lining their own nests, and disappearing down it’s own plug hole. Not worth a damn. Same thing as BL, on a bigger scale, and going to end the same way.
Edited by cardigankid on Tuesday 20th October 10:41
BL had a poor reputation, most of it deserved. It's worth remembering though that they also had a lot of sales success with models such as the Austin 1100/1300 in the 60's and 70's when it had a 14% share of the UK market alone.
To put that into context, Ford has the largest share currently with it's entire range taking 9.3% of the UK market.
Top selling Ford in 2019 was the Fiesta with 73,000 sales.
The Austin 1100/1300 sold 157,679 in 1965 which is pretty impressive.
cardigankid said:
Politicians and civil servants can no more run a car manufacturer than respond to a pandemic or ‘fight Climate Change’. Now or then. If you want to know what it was like, just look at this shambolic inefficient country government now, obsessed with past glories and disappearing down it’s own plug hole. Not worth a damn. Same thing on a bigger scale.
By and large the private sector in this country is very successful. But politicians and civil servants are the cold hand of death to any enterprise you care to mention.AndrewCrown said:
Aaron
Pop here https://www.aronline.co.uk/
Lots of history on British Leyland and all the various marques... It is an absolutely enormous website and you can immerse yourself in facts and figures...
Latterly they have been including other brands to keep it current....
Superb...many thanks! Pop here https://www.aronline.co.uk/
Lots of history on British Leyland and all the various marques... It is an absolutely enormous website and you can immerse yourself in facts and figures...
Latterly they have been including other brands to keep it current....
j4r4lly said:
BL had a poor reputation, most of it deserved. It's worth remembering though that they also had a lot of sales success with models such as the Austin 1100/1300 in the 60's and 70's when it had a 14% share of the UK market alone.
To put that into context, Ford has the largest share currently with it's entire range taking 9.3% of the UK market.
Top selling Ford in 2019 was the Fiesta with 73,000 sales.
The Austin 1100/1300 sold 157,679 in 1965 which is pretty impressive.
Not entirely to do with the cars though. Foreign cars were expensive and people actively bought British made cars. At that time, British roads were full of cars manufactured in the UK and we didn't buy cars from those war-mongering foreigners!!To put that into context, Ford has the largest share currently with it's entire range taking 9.3% of the UK market.
Top selling Ford in 2019 was the Fiesta with 73,000 sales.
The Austin 1100/1300 sold 157,679 in 1965 which is pretty impressive.
My father's first foreign car was a Toyota Corolla 30 in 1978. We were aghast then wonderstruck by how much better it was.
Edited by LuS1fer on Tuesday 20th October 09:46
Yertis said:
cardigankid said:
Politicians and civil servants can no more run a car manufacturer than respond to a pandemic or ‘fight Climate Change’. Now or then. If you want to know what it was like, just look at this shambolic inefficient country government now, obsessed with past glories and disappearing down it’s own plug hole. Not worth a damn. Same thing on a bigger scale.
By and large the private sector in this country is very successful. But politicians and civil servants are the cold hand of death to any enterprise you care to mention.The Don of Croy said:
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Good times - I had a 416Gti delivered in 1990 and drove it 46000 miles over the next ten months. Servicing was fairly frequent but there was never any requirement for anything other than routine maintenance. Nothing fell off, stopped working, or let me down. Great car and comfy too. Quick enough.Such a step up from the 216SE efi I had just a few years earlier, that had paint drips on the c pillar, a loose fixing within the dash (rolling around when cornering), and numerous minor irritations that were built in. Nice wood features however. And a real leather gear lever gaitor.
Had they continued at that level (good competitive cars built to consistent high standards) then who knows what they might have achieved? Actually the R75 has many good points...
Nice article here about the 40th anniversary of the Metro.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-544...
LuS1fer said:
My father's first foreign car was a Toyota Corolla 30 in 1978. We were aghast then wonderstruck by how much better it was.
My first car in 1979 was an Austin 1300. A mate had a Datsun 100A, and it was light years ahead of my heap of grief. Edited by LuS1fer on Tuesday 20th October 09:46
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