The Rot Sets In: the 1800
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nce development of the ADO16 was well established and heading rapidly towards production, the question of producing a mid-range car to replace the “Farina” cars raised it`s head again. Unlike in the past when BMC would have re-bodied an existing car and launched it in a multitude of badge engineered variations, the idea this time, with the ADO17 was to produce an entirely new car from the wheels up.

In terms of configuration, the set-up of the new mid-sized car would follow the same transverse engine and transmission-in-sump arrangement as the Mini and 1100. Obviously the larger car would be built around the 1.5-litre B-Series engine and as, such would directly replace the 1.5-litre Farinas and boost the popularity of the mid-range BMCs as the Mini and 1100 would prove to do in the small car market. Before Leonard Lord had re-directed efforts towards producing the Mini, Issigonis had been working on his own mid-sized car, which by 1956 was denoted the XC9000 – a car that although was driven by it`s rear wheels, “driven at the wrong end”, as Issigonis put it, it did sire some ideas for the later ADO17, such as it`s long wheelbase in relation to the length of the car. Actually, had it not been for the intervention of the events in the Suez, the mid-sized car probably would have appeared by about 1960, but as it was the Farina cars were introduced in 1958 and served as a “stop gap” until Issigonis could resume work on his ADO17.

XC9001 study was an offshoot of the development programme that resulted in the ADO16. Styling was almost identical to the Pininfarina-penned ADO16 prototype XC9002, but this style was dropped in favour of a more "Land Crab" theme developed by Pininfarina later on.

So, when the big car thinking resumed in earnest in the Autumn of 1958, the thinking was very much a front wheel drive car and prototypes soon began to appear under the code number XC9001. In 1958, two XC9001 prototypes were evaluated, the first to appear was a Pininfarina proposal that looked rather like an enlarged ADO16 (see above), and the second one - a larger car - was more recognisably an 1800, with it`s characteristic Six-light bodywork and cropped-fins. The latter of the two, was the model that was eventually pursued by BMC, because it was felt that the bigger car would make better use of the upcoming enlarged verision of the B-Series engine. It was this decision to switch to the larger version of the engine that influenced the company's decision to go with the six-light version of the car - and in doing so would be reflected (later in development) with a change in codename from XC9001 to XC9005.

Instead of keeping the dimensions similar in size to those of the Farina, Issigonis grew the car to take advantage of the extra grunt that the 1.8-litre engine; the wheelbase growing out to a full 106 inches – some 6 inches longer than the car it was supposed to replace. Actually, with such a long wheelbase, the interior accommodation would prove to be truly impressive, rivalling much larger cars, such as the Austin Westminster. During the development of the ADO17, George Harriman replaced Leonard Lord at the top of BMC, but continued to have complete confidence in the judgement of his design chief at Longbridge (if anything becoming even more dependent on the views of this man), believing that the 1.8-litre car would be exactly what the market wanted, trusting that Issigonis had the magic touch when it came to the creation of new cars.

Left: Second XC9001 prototype was recognisably an 1800. Right: XC9005 prototype parked-up next to the car it was designed to replace - the styling was to be further refined by Pininfarina in the headlamp/grille area, because of it's striking similarity to the Austin version of the ADO16.

Development of the ADO17 continued afoot, although it`s designation changed from the XC9001 to XC9005 in June 1960 (XC9001 signified the 1.5-Litre option, XC9005 indicated a 1.8-Litre version) - and by this time it looked almost like the fininshed article, launched in 1964. Actually, the ADO17 project name was officially attached to the car around this time and brought development in-line with all subsequent BMC designs that would subsequently appear.

The appearance and execution of the ADO17 was already set in the mind of Issigonis as it had been since 1958, but the trouble was that as development on the car continued, it moved further and further away from being the car that could replace the Farinas on the market place. After their successful work on the ADO16, Pininfarina were involved in the latter stages of the car's styling programme, and would prove to be responsible for some of the last minute revisions to the design of the ADO17. The car already looked rather similar to the Austin version of the ADO16, so the Italian styling house undertook a final restyle of the front end (which would result in the final solution) and give it a touch of individuality that would associate it with the ADO16, but not too closely. One car see the reasoning behind this decision, afterall, the ADO16 was a car that already was selling extremely well, but it has to be said that Pininfarina did, perhaps, not infleuence the design enough. Unfortunately, Pininfarina only worked on the headlights, grille and front wings - The centre section remained untouched – and that, arguably, was the ADO17`s most unhappy aspect.

As mentioned, the four cylinder engine was basically the 1.8-litre version of the B-Series engine found in the MGB, but in the standard single carburettor incarnation, it was seen as being too unrefined for use in a saloon car. In the pursuit of that extra refinement, it was therefore reworked completely to take a five-bearing crankshaft (see Chapter Three, MGB) despite the fact that the engine had only recently been bored-out to 1.8-litres. Unusually, the cylinders were siamesed in two pairs, an expedient adopted with the increase in bore size from 76.2mm of the three bearing crankshaft version of the B series engine to 80.3mm of the new variation. With this re-working, the single SU carburettor version of the new engine gave a healthy 85BHP at 5300RPM and was enough to endow the new car with more than acceptable performance.

Technically, the rest of the story with the ADO17 was pretty much as with the ADO16, only scaled up somewhat. Minor refinements were of course, implemented, especially in the gearbox: compared with the ADO16, the ADO17 transmission was set further back in relationship with the engine, in order to aid packaging – by fitting beneath the front suspension cross-tube (the hydrolastic units sat in this tube, horizontally across the car). Apart from that, refinements were made to the lubrication system within the gearbox - to ensure that there would be no more instances of the weaknesses in the Issigonis transmission-in-sump arrangement.

The front suspension layout differed from the ADO16 and is demonstrated above. All the stresses imposed by the weight of the car are contained in a tubular cross-member which is welded to the dash and adds great strength to the bulkhead structure. This was an elegant and novel solution that meant that the car could forego the need for a front subframe and was one of the contributory factors in the cars great structural rigidity.

The ADO17 also differed from the Mini and ADO16 by not having subframe assemblies. The front suspension and engine were mounted directly to the body, which meant that Issigonis designed the ADO17 to have an incredibly stiff structure. In the Mini and ADO16, the subframes added strength to the structure and also served as an effective insulation from road induced noise. Without these, Issigonis ensured that there would be no criticism against the car in these areas by over-engineering the car`s hull. Such was the effectiveness of the ADO17 design, the ADO71 Princess that appeared to replace it over a decade later actually could not match the car`s structural integrity, even with the benefit of the computer aided design that was used in it`s development.

Austin 1800 on display - In Mark I form this car certainly looked set to continue the styling theme established by the Mini, whilst the Pininfarina front end tied it in with the recently launched ADO16. The proportions may have been 'unconventional' but it certainly looked different to the "grey porridge" offered by Vauxhall and the Rootes Group at the time. (Picture reproduced and supplied by Declan Berridge)

But when the ADO17 was launched in October 1964, what emerged from Longbridge was, therefore, a car that was faster, heavier, larger and more expensive than the car it was designed to replace. With that in mind, BMC quite sensibly kept the Farinas in production, although that was not an expedient move as there was little profit in these cars and, being a product of a bygone era, they did not fit-in readily with the rest of the range. It also meant that had the Farina not remained in production, there would have been a huge, gaping gap in the range between the small and perfectly formed ADO16 and the oversized ADO17. Of course the ADO17 was actually a quite compact car in terms of it`s length; it`s space efficiency remains to this day absolutely astounding in relation to it`s length, but the fact remained that the car was larger than the buyer of a mid-sized car was looking for at the time. What particularly set the ADO17 apart from all it`s rivals was the massive width of the car – it had been designed from the outset to be able to accommodate a straight six-cylinder engine and because it was required to sit transversally across the car, it needed to be made wide to accommodate it.

Unabashed, George Harriman accepted the view given to him by the dealers that the car could produced at a rate of 4000 a week and they would be able to sell all of these cars without difficulty. The truth was somewhat different; the ADO17 was priced at some fourteen percent above the Austin Cambridge and was pitched at a point in the range where it more resembled a gap-filling car in the range between the Farina and Austin Westminster, even though it was just as roomy as the larger and more expensive car. As it was, demand for the car was slow to build and it gave the management time to realise that it was never going to meet the anticipated sales targets – and would never have done so, even if it had been the direct replacement for the Farina that it was envisaged to be.

Sure footed front wheel drive chassis ensured that the ADO17 continued the tradition for exemplary road manners started by the Mini and then augmented by the ADO16.

Like the ADO16 before it, the ADO17 was not offered through the entire dealer network; in a quid pro quo arrangement, the Austin dealers got the first crack of the whip with the ADO17 in September 1964 and it was not until 1966, that the badge engineered Morris versions made their appearance on the market. Of course, looking at that situation retrospectively, it was a quite ridiculous situation to offer your new and drastically important mid-sized car through half of the company`s available dealers, but that is exactly what BMC did twice during the decade. Madness!

By the time the Morris and Wolseley versions had made their appearances, it was quite clear that the ADO17 was never even going to get close to it`s sales targets and in fact it never managed more than the modest total of 40,000 sales per year – compare that to the 130,000 sales per year that the ADO16 was running at and it demonstrates just how much of a failure on the market the ADO17 really was.

The problem of course does not always lie with a car`s styling alone – some ugly cars do sell well, but it is generally because they are regarded to be good cars and see despite their looks. In the case of the ADO17, the car`s odd styling and somewhat inappropriate proportions were not the only problems. OK, so it was a fabulously space-efficient car, but the list of dynamic shortcomings far outweighed it`s commodiousness. Firstly, in an attempt to give the car the maximum possible interior space, Issigonis had saddled the ADO17 with the same rather compromised driving position that was found in the Mini and ADO16. This may be considered an amiable eccentricity in an inexpensive car like the Mini, but it was a major flaw in a car with more upmarket pretensions. Also the steering was unacceptably heavy and low-geared, but as Issigonis was breaking new boundaries in launching such a large front wheel driven car, it was accepted that the steering would have to be given a lower ratio rack in order to keep effort down. Unfortunately, it was not taken into account during development of the ADO17 that there would be the requirement for power steering because none of it`s domestic rivals had it – at the time. The only comparable car at the time with front wheel drive was the Citroen DS and that came with Power assisted steering anyway.

The other problem was that the ADO17 suffered from reliability issues that proved troublesome for the company to fix – most notably, it`s propensity to burn oil at alarming rate; a problem that took a considerable amount of time to cure, being attributable to the car being over-filled with oil due to it`s incorrectly calibrated dip stick. Such stories made great press and were widely circulated, which had the predictable effects on sales. Customer confidence in the ADO17 – and BMC - was dented by such stories and although these maladies were eventually fixed, it proved too late; the damage had been done.

Once the Morris and Austin models were launched, the badge engineered Wolseley 18/85 version followed in 1967, but unlike the ADO16 and Farina models, that was the extent of the badge engineering for this car. There was some work undertaken on the development of a Riley version, but it did not make production because it was felt that it would clash with the Wolseley version – and further variations of the ADO17 were felt to be pointless because of it`s poor sales performance from the day of it`s launch. Obviously work was done on facelyifting the car, but because of it`s "unique" proportions and stance, it proved an almost impossible task without an expensive rebody - that did not stop BMC Australia producing their take on the ADO17, called the Kimberley, but this would prove to be just as awkwardly styled as the car it was based upon. So the development of the ADO17 continued in a marketing sense – there was obviously no way that there could be an MG version – the ADO17 was an excellent passenger carrier, but a sporting saloon it was not – and the same could be said about a Vanden Plas version – the ADO17 as it was could no way carry off a makeover with upmarket aspirations – although, again, a full-scale prototype was built.

Estate study made it to full-size prototype – the plug was only pulled on it when it became evident that it would end up being almost identical to the Austin Maxi.

There was also some preliminary development work undertaken on an estate version of the ADO17, but two factors ruled out the production of this variation: the fact that management considered that it would be in direct competition with the traveller version of the Morris Oxford/Austin Cambridge (not true, it would be far more commodious and expensive) and when it became clear that the Farina would be replaced by the ADO14 (which was now in the early stages of development), a car that would heavily resemble an ADO17 estate. The shame is that the BMC 1800 would have made an excellent basis for an estate version, with it`s compact suspension system and lack of rear wheel drive mechanicals at the important end (for an estate car).

It was not until 1972 that the first major mechanical addition to the ADO17 was made, with the launch of the 2.2-litre E-Series versions. The straight six was actually conceived in the BMC years and was basically a six-cylinder version of the E-Series engine that was being used at the time in the Maxi. For anyone that saw the compromises in original four cylinder version of the E-Series engine with it`s siamesed bores with no water jacketing between the cylinders, it became obvious that it was designed that way in order to be as compact as possible. The reason for it`s compactness was that when stretched to Six cylinders, it needed to fit across the engine bay of the ADO17. Looking back at it now, it seems remarkable that any car would be designed from scratch with the intention of using a transverse straight six, but that is exactly what BMC envisaged with the ADO17.

The 6-cylinder 2227cc E Series engine found a natural home in the plush and roomy Wolseley Six. The trouble is that no-one found the car to be what they wanted and even though in many ways, this ultimate incarnation of the ADO17 was a better car than such alternatives as the Rover 2200 or Ford Consul, it fell victim to “badge snobbery”. This 1974 model demonstrates perfectly the odd proportions of the car, with it`s long wheelbase, truncated front and rear ends and huge width. It is for this, the ADO17 earned the nickname, “Land Crab”.

So why was the ADO17 such a poor seller? Well, looking at the situation logically, the car failed on a number of counts: it was not the car that the mid-sized market needed – it`s engine was too big, it cost significantly more than the Ford Cortina and it was also too commodious. The mid-sized buyer (the company car man) liked a car that they could understand – and the BMC 1800 was such a unique concept that most people in the market chose to avoid what they did not understand. It also failed because it was too obviously “mid-sized” to be considered an alternative to the large 3-litre saloons that were on offer at the time. That would indicate a certain lack of judgement from the big-car buyer, because the ADO17 was a truly capable car. Certainly when the Austin 3-Litre was launched in 1969, the 1800 in twin carburettor form could outperform it and offered more interior space. In modern terms, the ADO17 was as much a miracle of packaging efficiency as the Mini was – it was roughly the same length as a Ford Focus, but offered considerably more interior room than the Ford Mondeo – and it offered something to the motoring world that should not be underestimated.

But the truth is that buyers simply did not understand the car and on that basis perhaps, BMC should have not rested on their laurels when designing it. They should have accepted that larger cars would encourage more demanding motorists and so, should have given it a more effectively styled body shell. BMC and Pininfarina had worked closely in the past and it is a shame that the company did not employ the Italian master to style the complete car, instead of simply altering an Issigonis-penned design. Perhaps when BMC saw just how badly the car was faring on the marketplace, they should have committed to a re-body along the lines of the BMC-Pininfarina prototype that was shown to the world in 1967 – it may not have appealed to the middle-market man who was eminently happy to buy Cortinas in their hundreds of thousands, but it`s futuristic Citroen CX-type looks might have encouraged a new breed of buyer to Austin. The company knew they were heading for a takeover by Leyland at the time and so, should have thrown caution to the wind, accepted that the BMC 1800 was a moderate seller and so, given it the beautiful body it so richly deserved – it would perhaps have given the company a significant presence in the junior executive market that was emerging from the shadows with the success of the Rover P6 and Triumph 2000.

On the left is an early (1964 vintage) Austin 1800 and on the right is a late (1974) Austin 1800 mark III. Spot the difference!

The styling of the car does not address the issue of the unsuitability of the basic model on the marketplace. Really, Issigonis should have had his creative impulses reined in when putting together his plans for the ADO17. It must have looked terribly appealing to build the car around the larger 1800cc engine, but it did move it away entirely from the market that it was intended for. It was designed to replace the Farina and yet the company thought it was a good idea to make it bigger and considerably more expensive – that was a monstrous and fundamental mistake to make. The Issigonis concept was a marvellous one, but perhaps the ADO17 should have stuck with the 1622cc version of the B Series engine, sat on a 100-inch wheelbase that was the class norm and had a more traditional “three box” body shell.

Again, being an expert after the event is an easy game to play, but it does clearly illustrate in this case that the ADO17 marked the point in time when the fortunes of BMC took a sharp and sudden downturn.

The immediate failure of the car on the market rang alarm bells at Longbridge and immediately, steps in the marketing department were taken so as to avoid repeating the faux pas of developing a car that the market patently did not want. For the first time, BMC finally woke up to the fact that people were no longer prepared to blindly buy their products – and so, the result was that the company started to employ the services of market researchers. It was a step in the right direction, but alas, it was too late. Had George Harriman not been so unquestioning of the judgement of Alec Issigonis, then there might have been some more searching questions asked as the ADO17 took shape, but as it was, his judgement was accepted unreservedly and so, BMC surrendered the middle market to Ford, which in turn led to the series of events that culminated with Leyland taking over BMC.

Copyright © 2002 Keith Adams, with contributions by Declan Berridge