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| The flimsy chrome bumper profiles this car as the UK version called the Morris Marina. |
DEAR SERGEANT AL: I have an English car question for you: I have a
1978 Austin Marina 4 door in beige in my garage that is, believe it or
not, in pretty good shape but it does need some minor body work as the paint is
worn. The car actually runs though, as it needs a new exhaust system including
an intake manifold. I haven’t seen any on the road in God knows how long and
quite frankly not on the Net nowadays or lately. Is this car worth restoring? —THE INCREDIBLE NONWORKING AUSTIN MARINA.
DEAR TINA MARINA: OMG, an Austin Marina? Are you sure you didn't mean ASTON MARTIN? Other than a boat pier in
Texas, I almost forgot such a car existed! The reason why you don’t see any
Marinas on the Net lately TINA is probably because
you have the last Austin Marina left on the planet! If whatever Austin/Morris
Marinas are left weren’t parted out on the Internet, the remainders rusted into
oblivion. The mere fact that you stated you have a 1978 Austin Morris actually
gives me several clues if you are in fact emailing me from somewhere here in
North America:
1.
You car comes from Canada, as the Marina was imported to the States
from 1973-1975. However, the car was sold in Canada until 1978, so you have one
of the last units that were sold there before the car ceased production in
Great Britain in 1980.
2.
If the car is not that badly rusted it was probably kept either in a
garage, and/or not used often during the winter where there is road salt. The
car was made so on the cheap it was not built with any anti-corrosive
properties. It doesn’t snow as much in
the UK as it does here. So this car usually met its demise either by rust or by
mechanical.
3.
If #2 is not necessarily the case, the car is driven and/or stored
somewhere in the Southwest where the climate is the only place such a car can
survive.
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| The heavy US bumper specs this car as the US version called the Austin Marina. |
Before I give you the rundown on what you should
do with your Marina let me give some background on what an Austin Marina is and
the company that made them.
British Leyland, the company that made the
Marina, was a British automotive consortium formed in the late 1960’s after a
group of smaller British car companies were failing. Some might say that
putting several small companies together to make one big one was the beginning
of that concept that would ensure that British Leyland would become “too big to
fail,” which eventually and inevitably it did. The 1960’s to the 1980’s was not
a good period for British car companies, as they were poorly mismanaged in a
lackluster post war world economy where the Germans and Japanese were finished
licking their wounds from the war domestically and were becoming successful at
manufacturing and selling their cars worldwide. The backdrop of all of this was
the Energy Crisis of 1973 that lasted through bouts periodically until the
early 1980’s. To compete the British and the Americans had to come up with
automotive products that not only were better build quality that some auto
analysts can say didn’t happen actually until recently (in the case of the
British they needed help from the Germans, read on), but they also had to come
up with products that were economical to buy and drive. The Honda Civic, the
Volkswagen Beatle and Rabbit/Golf, the Toyota Corolla, and the Datsun B210 (the
Nissan Sentra now) were already starting to make names for themselves in the
1970’s when gas prices were soaring, and Americans and the emerging markets
were looking for cheap transportation. The only thing the Americans had were GM’s
Chevy Corvair, then the Vega then the Chevette. AMC had the Gremlin, then the
Pacer. Chrysler had the Plymouth Valiant/Dodge Dart at first, and then tried
its fate with the smaller Plymouth Horizon/Dodge Omni. Ford proved a disaster
with the Ford Pinto, and then moved on to the Ford Escort, both an American and
a world version. In Britain, the Ford Cortina was the second most popular car
sold. In the mid 70’s the most popular car sold in the UK was the Austin/Morris
Marina. None of these British and American cars were any good quality-wise to
what the Germans and Japanese were building. In fact several automotive and mainstream journals have elected the Austin Morris Marina as one of, if not the worse car ever built, perhaps the British version of the Ford Edsel . . .
When Jaguar, Rover, Land Rover, MG, Morris, Austin,
and Mini all merged with Leyland’s bus and truck divisions to form what at first
was called British Leyland in 1968 then the Rover Group, they realized that
they needed an entry level car that they could market at home and worldwide.
But in the late 1960’s the company didn’t have money for development, the economy
was bad, and Britain was having labor problems layered with morale and wage
issues that made anything that was British and industrial not very well made.
When BL was born none of their smaller progenitors came with any money so they
had to turn to their MG, Austin, and Morris parts bins and the designer of the
Cortina who jumped ship from Ford to come up with a new car. The Marina was
born. They say this was the beginning of when British Leyland died. Cost
overruns, poor design and build quality, and bringing a product too quickly to
market without thoroughly designing and testing it, all the things that car
companies now know are the features that spell their demise, were all
responsible for not only the Marina being a disaster, but why the Rover Group
eventually failed and was broken up by the Thatcher Administration. This lead
to Jaguar going to Ford, and Land Rover and Mini going to BMW. In fact at the
end of this fiasco, a British national owned not one single British car
company. Ford bought Aston Martin and sold Jaguar , Land Rover, and Daimler to Tata Motors of
India, BMW now owns Mini and Rolls Royce, and Volkswagen eventually wound up
with just Bentley after they thought they purchased Rolls Royce, which they
didn’t. A Malaysian car company owns Lotus cars, and the Chinese now own MG.
Austin and Morris was left in limbo.
You would think that would make your car a
collector’s item TINA, but for whatever reason it’s not there yet. According to
British records, after BL produced about 807,000 Marinas during its run in Britain, they
estimate that there are only about less than 800 examples still left still on the road
in the UK. I can only suspect there are even less here in North America. The
Marina’s DNA reeks of a hybrid of MG and Mini, but the fact remains that nobody wants to buy a small
unreliable old geeky saloon compared to a timeless classic English roadster or
hip micro car. Trust me when I state that if the Austin Marina was that hot,
BMW would have snapped up Austin Morris to whip out a retro halo Austin Marina
like they did with the Mini Cooper. That just ain’t gonna happen. But your
Marina is definitely an endangered species about to go extinct by way of rust. It's still difficult to estimate what the present value is (probably not much)
and to estimate what its future potential value will be. I do know for sure that some day and relatively soon your car will become a hot item out of scarcity. I researched the Internet to
find plenty of Marina parts for sale but not one whole Marina itself, not even in the
previous auctions on EBay.
Restoring an Austin Marina to Concours condition
will be a very expensive proposition and probably not worth it for a while. Should
you decide to keep the car, if you can afford to, I would wait if I were you
and see what happens to the value when this recession is over. I would join an Austin Morris Motor Club and keep
your eyes on Hemming’s to see where the value is going as someday soon when there REALLY aren't many left, your
Austin Morris will become the hottest thing since sliced bread like old Mini
Coopers are right now. This is not the kind of answer I would like to give you but it’s
the best probably anyone can give you for now. Hang in there as I think the Austin Marina even though it is a lemon pit, it's still a cute nifty car! Thanks for the question TINA, and
safe driving!
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Sgt. Al here. I welcome your comments, ideas, and suggestions. You have questions about the police, and I'm interested in hearing what you have to say as a citizen. Thanks!