Leyland's New Convention: Marina
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mmediately after the merger, it became apparent to the BL Board that once the Maxi and Mini Clubman were launched, there would be no further new BMC-conceived cars in the pipeline – nothing new was in development and even before the Maxi hit the roads, the management knew that it would not cut the mustard. Because of this, a plan was rapidly devised to survey the car market and see where in it, the newly-formed British Leyland could introduce a car to rapidly increase their dwindling production volumes. The answer that came back was as swift as it was obvious: the ADO16 was the best selling car in the UK to private motorists, but fleet buyers did not like its complexity and unreliability. What BLMC needed was a Ford Cortina; a simple, tough and good looking car that would withstand the abuse that professional travellers meted out to their car – and importantly, if it failed, it was cheap to fix.

Whilst some quarters within British Leyland considered that a front wheel drive ADO16 replacement was the utmost priority, continued excellent sales of it indicated otherwise. Charged with rejuvenating the Austin-Morris range, Harry Webster formulated a plan that initially centred around a comprehensive re-body of the Morris Minor – a car that unlike the later front-wheel-drive ADO16 and ADO17 was regarded to be tough and most importantly, reliable. So although, the running gear dated back to 1948, it was very much a known quantity and facilitated an accelerated development programme for the new car.

What about the new car, itself? Well, Harry Webster envisaged that using this basic Morris Minor componentry and a new body, it would be possible to develop an effective Ford Escort/Vauxhall Viva rival. Obviously, there would need to be a 10 inch stretch of wheelbase in order to go Escort-chasing, but with the anticipated range, which encompassed 1100cc, 1300cc and 1500cc versions, a favourable and company car-friendly specification was taking shape. Webster also felt confident enough at this stage of development to put it to the BL board that the car should be priced at a premium of about £20 over the Escort, stating that the new car would offer more.

In devising plans for the ADO28, Webster told BL's product planners headed by Austin-Morris chief, Filmer Paradise in April 1968 that the Fiat 124 was perfect template in terms of size and packaging for the new car. Paradise looked at the demands of the fleet market, which was likely to take up to 40 per cent of the UK market by the early Seventies and came up with an all-embracing specification which because of time and budget constraints, promised to tax Webster's team. A conventional layout was essential, the size was already defined and there should be a wide range of body styles, engine sizes and trim options, along with a nice, large boot. Putting even more pressure on Harry Webster, Donald Stokes already had it set in his own mind that the launch for the ADO28 would take place at the Earls Court Motor show in 1970 and made it clear to Webster that he did not want to deviate from this plan. Such was the level of urgency to get this new car out for this time that Webster was forced to take many short cuts in the development of the new car.

May 1968 – only five months after the merger, remember! - The concept of the ADO28 was firming up and the product planners backed up Webster's original concept that the car should be conceived in order to face up to increasing competition in the 1100cc-1500cc rear-wheel-drive saloon market, as epitomised by the Ford Escort and Vauxhall Viva. Unlike the technically-dense ADO16, it was thought that compactness would not be a selling point in this most conservative of markets. Like Ford, British Leyland followed the philosophy in creating the ADO28 that it needed to be a relatively large car so that it would create the impression that the customer was getting, “more metal for their money”.

The ADO28 was already emerging as an utterly conventional car and it cannot have been satisfying for Cowley-based engineers and designers brought-up on the advanced designs of Issigonis before to be part of the creative process of the new car. Conventional it may have been, but management felt that it was the car that the market was crying out for from the new company. Whereas less than a decade previously, George Harriman had confidently stated that BMC would follow a policy that precluded competing directly against Ford, the new management were confidently espousing the exact opposite! The ADO28 was designed to fight Ford head-on and the company used Ford-inspired processes in order to cost the new car – something unheard of in BMC days. Because management and product planners were so confident of its chances, they predicted that they would be selling the new car at a rate of 6000 per week.

If at this stage, the marketing of the ADO28 seemed to be a straightforward affair, the engineering of the car was even more so. That is not to say that Harry Webster did not have his work cut-out with the new car. Unlike the case of the Maxi, where he inherited a car towards the end of its gestation and was limited to making the best of a bad car, the ADO28 project was compromised by the fact that in order to get it into production so quickly, it would rely almost entirely on the BL parts-bin. This may have been an appealing economy and it certainly accelerated the development programme drastically, it did leave Webster's team with many problems associated with using the Morris Minor as a starting point for a new car:

·   The Morris Minor gearbox had no provision for a synchromesh on first gear, so after careful costing comparisons between redesigning the existing 'box and the use of the Triumph 1300 unit, it was decided to go for the Triumph solution. This caused problems because production volumes at Longbridge needed to be raised, which meant re-development at the gearbox works.

·   Similar difficulties were encountered with other components due to the age of the donor car.

·   As Morris Minor sales dwindled over time, the production facilities at Cowley had been used for other purposes and could not be re-commissioned.

·   Brakes and front suspension were employed on the ADO28 after being modified, but the lever-arm damper arrangement inherited from the Minor was not an ideal solution and proved expensive to build.

In July, Roy Haynes was asked by Webster to look at the packaging and the styling of the ADO28 and take stock of the design as it was at this point in time. He noted that the target dimensions of the ADO28 should be slightly larger than its competitors (“metal for money” considerations again) and that the styling of the car would play an important part of the overall desirability of it in relation to its rivals. Whereas the ADO17 and Maxi were designed with space considerations rather than exterior styling being the utmost priority, the ADO28 would tread a different path: it should be a highly styled car, but in order to fit into its designated slot in the market, it should not be not too different from its current rivals, but at the same time, also anticipate future models to a degree. Because the ADO28 was also being conceived as a British Leyland stop-gap which would remain in production until 1976-1977 at the latest, considerations of “future-proofing” its design were of secondary importance. As Haynes later stated, “Any attempt to create an image radically different from the competition will destroy the opportunities which can be created to effect an immediate transfer of loyalty from the competitive brands” – such conservatism was a far cry from the radicalism at BMC in the early Sixties.

Haynes also felt that the two door model should be a style leader aimed at the under 35s and rather than the usual practice of offering identical profiles for both two and four-door saloon versions, BL should offer something subtly different. So Haynes cooked up the plan that the two-door version should be a sporting package with a coupe-style body in order to throw off the image that BL were manufacturing conservatively-styled family cars for an ageing clientele. He also ensured that the interior should move way from the traditional wood-veneer-and-leather ambience that abounded in products of the company and move towards something more exciting and dynamic. The four-door version would tie-in with the more “exciting” two-door, but also have the more traditional core values that were expected in the high selling fleet market.

Haynes rapidly worked towards producing the two versions of the ADO28 and within weeks, had completed his first models for the proposed new car – available in coupe and saloon versions. The Haynes models were presented to the British Leyland executive policy committee on the 5th August 1968 alongside competition from the Italian design houses Pininfarina and Michelotti. Haynes' dual proposals were given the nod by the BL big-wigs, subject to modifications, which is an exceptional compliment to Haynes considering the strength of the opposition. Pininfarina's version was over-looked by management because it had what was considered to be a too large glass area, which would have meant the production costs would have been prohibitive.

At this point in time, some executives in the company were making it known that they were unhappy with the fact that precedence was being given to the ADO28 and not to the ADO16 replacement, on which work had also recently been instigated. One senior Pressed Steel director wrote to Stokes voicing his concerns over the fact that building the ADO28 was going to put British Leyland on a collision course with the Americans. The problem with that was that they did not have the resources to battle Ford and Vauxhall and the feeling was that there was no viable starting point in the company from which to do so. He also stated that building this rear-wheel-drive car would send out the wrong signals to the industry and their customer base and imply that BLMC were abandoning front-wheel-drive.

It was a tough call, but Stokes correctly overruled these dissenters in the company because the Mini and 1100 were still selling extremely strongly and it was in the middle ground of the market that BLMC were really suffering at the hands of the multi-nationals. If BLMC were to survive as a large scale producer of mid-range cars, they would have to produce something with which to fight Ford and Vauxhall head-to-head and not to produce something different that customers may not understand – as was the case with the Austin Maxi and BMC ADO17.

As a Morris-badged car, it was only logical that Donald Stokes should decide that the AD028 be built at the Morris Works in Cowley. The problem with this plan though, was that the factory was in such a poor state, that the company would only be in a position to build the new car there after the factory was completely gutted. The Minor production line would never be able to cope with the planned volumes that the new car was going to be produced in, so a £40m investment was made in the Cowley works in order to get the factory into suitable shape. What resulted from this was that the car bodies would now be assembled at Pressed Steel Fisher body building plant at Cowley which was extensively revised and linked by a covered half mile long bridge to the main production line at Morris Motors at Cowley, thereby saving the company the considerable cost of shipping them in from Swindon.

Now that the ADO28 was becoming crystallised, and the marketing of the car was becoming more settled, a launch strategy was being put into place. Late in 1968, the plan was for the “high image” fastback version of the car to be launched at the 1970 motor show and the saloon would follow six months later. The entry price for the base model was projected to be £575. The trouble with this plan was that market research was now showing that the greatest projected growth in the market was in the Cortina class between 1200cc and 2000cc – way beyond the planned engine range of the ADO28. Not only this, but BLMC became aware that the Cortina Mark III would also launch in 1970 and most worryingly for BLMC, was to be an entirely larger car than the Mark II version that the ADO28 more closely mirrored.

The Leyland board were happy to continue with the ADO28 as it was because it was already closer to the Cortina than the Escort, but would have to widen the range of engines offered because they had nothing to offer that could compete with the current Cortina 1600E, let alone the 2000cc Mark III Cortina. The obvious answer for BLMC was to upwardly extend the engine range offered because as George Turnbull said, “We thought we’d have a distinct marketing advantage if we could out-perform them”. So Stokes instructed Harry Webster to ensure that the engine bay was enlarged in order to fit a wider range of engines than had initially been planned for. Gradually, in becoming a Cortina-rival, the ADO28 was getting more expensive and moving away from Webster's original brief of a Ford Escort-rivalling 1100-1500cc saloon.

By September 1968, John Barber was also raising concerns about the ADO28, in particular about the costing of the car. From the beginning of the project, the costs had not been properly laid down or controlled and no-one in the product planning department actually knew whether the ADO28 would not make a profit if it were sold at the planned price of £575. Donald Stokes' response to this was that the overriding priority was to get the ADO28 into production readiness and the cost implications of it could be sorted out later. By the end of the year, Longbridge financiers were now reporting that rising costs in the development programme had eaten into the ADO28 profit potential. In response to this, George Turnbull took the stance that a full recovery of overheads plus a corporate profit of £25 would be acceptable and that ADO28 would need to be modified in order to meet these goals. The target retail price for the basic two-door model must not be pushed above £580 in order to achieve these profit targets – Turnbull was very aware that the fleet market was an extremely price-sensitive area of the market.

By February 1969, the projections that were now coming out of Longbridge were that the ADO28 would return a negligible profit and so, Turnbull insisted that more costs be taken out of the car, in preference to raising the price. In fact, it was worse than that: the expectation was now that even at a starting price of £580, a loss would be made on every car sold. Product planners looked at this scenario and decided that the best plan of action was to raise the starting price of the ADO28 to £620 and make a modest profit on each car. Cold comfort could be drawn from the fact that the Cortina Mark III would come in at the same price point, but that did not take into account the fact that the new Ford would no doubt be impeccably costed for the company and no doubt larger and more appealing to the customer. It is fair to say that these cost implications alarmed Turnbull so much that when he met with production engineers, to lowering of costs were now the number one priority – so much so, that in order lower the production cost of the car, they identified the two-piece propshaft was an unnecessary extravagance and so, it had to go. Cost reduction programmes were now in place and every aspect of the ADO28 was under the microscope.

At this point in the development programme, the proposed engine range was the 1300cc A-Series, and the upcoming E-Series engine in 1500cc and 1750GT forms. Marketing considerations were still high on the list – and at this point, much higher than the engineering of the car, which was coming along in a very straightforward way, even if the cost of the car was an issue. Harry Webster's initial ideas on naming the ADO28 was to give it a model number, (such as “Morris 200”, for instance) but most people in the company favoured a name instead. John Barber wanted Morris Monaco, the studio men wanted Morris Machete and other suggestions for ADO28 included the Morris Mamba, Maori, Matelo and Musketeer. The final shortlist of Major, Mirage, Mistral and Marina emerged and Morris Marina was chosen as the car's moniker even though it was what the Morris version of the ADO16 was called in Denmark.

At the end of 1969, the decision was made for all models to be launched simultaneously and to offer the car in 1300, 1800 and 1800GT forms, but with a wider range of trim options. Slimming-down the range of engines offered would cut production costs and also allow for a wider range of trim options – thereby offering a BLMC alternative to every model in the Cortina range. The marketing men saw that the Marina would fit-in with the rest of the BLMC range very nicely; filling the gap between the ADO16 below it and the upcoming models in the 1750cc-2500cc range that were in the planning stages at the time. As envisaged at the beginning of the accelerated development programme, the Morris Marina would provide BLMC a perfect competitor in the fleet market and if you were an optimist in the company at the time, the feeling was that the Marina offered nearly everything the Cortina did, but in a more compact package.

Product planners saw that re-emergence of BLMC as a major player in the industry relied on the success of the Morris Marina and the company planned their future forecasts on the fact that they believed that it would take a 9 per cent share of the UK market. The company certainly underestimated the stranglehold that Ford had on the British fleet market, but what was more laughable was that planners seriously believed that the Morris Marina would go on to take 11 per cent of the market by 1973-74 – a time that the ADO67 Allegro would be on-stream too!

As was the case with this accelerated development programme, by the spring of 1970, pre-production prototypes were running on the roads and by the end of the year, Marinas were rolling off the production line at Cowley. Costs and profitability had successfully been kept down by the rationalization of the engine range – and by more successful planning in the development programme. In the end, the profit figure of the Marina was £30-£40 higher than the ADO16 at the time of its launch and the planned production volumes were still being put at a rate of 5500 per week. The total cost of developing the Morris Marina was put at £21 million and if it underwent a troubled gestation, starting out as an Escort rival but turning into a Cortina rival, but the company was very confident of the Marina's chances of success when it was launched at Cannes in April 1971.

When the Morris Marina was shown to the press, it was almost immediately obvious, that this was a simple car – and one that could be described as a “parts bin” special. There was not a great deal for the press to get excited about, but it was presented as a new car; the first product by British Leyland for British Leyland and as such, the marketing of the car would play a more important role than the engineering. The range of engines was unremarkable; the A Series version was lifted straight from the 1275cc version of the ADO16 with only minor alterations to the sump and manifold. The 1798cc B Series version installed in the Marina was adapted from the MGB version of the engine – the TC version of the Marinaessentially used an MGB engine and gearbox unmodified. The suspension was equally unremarkable, but unlike the ADO17 and the Maxi, the styling was judged as a success. The range covered the market well, although the 2-litre Cortina was more than a match for the Marina 1800TC, but the Marina was hampered by its narrower choice of engines – the range would be expanded in a marketing sense – trim levels – rather than in an engineering sense.

Interestingly, the two-door Marina was never marketed as a premium-priced car by the company – the youthful buyers’ angle quietly being dropped by the company. In all fairness to BLMC, they could have sold the car as a sporting coupe model and made some extra money on the car for all the market cared, but maybe the fact that the fastback version shared its front doors with the four-door version belied its cut-price roots discouraged BLMC from the practice.

The driving experience offered by the Marina was as unremarkable as the specification implied; one could pretty much write a road test report of the car without having sat behind the wheel at all. Initial road test reports were fairly kind to the car, mindful of the car's technical shortcomings – and it is fair to say that the 1800TC version possessed a certain potential, offering similar performance than the MGB and a slightly higher top speed of 100mph.

Because of the rushed development of the Marina though, the early pre-production 1.8 models were handed out to the press with a serious design flaw, which meant that the car suffered from almost terminal understeer. As reported by Jeff Daniels in the book, “BL: The Truth About The Cars”, both himself and Doug Nye shared a car which would land them on the opposite site of the road following any sharp curves taken at speed. Disturbed by this fact, Daniels the then Technical editor at Autocar compared notes with his opposite number at Motor magazine, who found that they also suffered the same problems when driving the 1800 version. Daniels and Charles Bulmer, the Editor of Motor magazine travelled up to Longbridge to see Harry Webster in order to lay he facts on the table; the Marina suffered from effectively a dangerous amount of understeer and unless the car was modified, they would have to publish what in effect, would be a warning in their upcoming road tests. Initially, Webster stated the problem was not so bad, but having been brow-beaten by Daniels and Bulmer, stated that he had already prepared modified versions of the Marina with front anti-roll bars, which due to time constraints, he could not install on the press cars shown in Cannes. Webster promised that although time was short, no production 1800s would be sold in unmodified form (the 1300 versions were lighter at the front-end, so the problem was nowhere as bad). Armed with this knowledge, Autocar and Motor both published their Marina road tests, which spoke in terms of normal levels of understeer, but it did demonstrate just how much pressure Webster was working under in order to get the Marina into production on time and in budget.

At launch, BLMC were well aware of the car's shortcomings, but as the Marina was only designed as a stop-gap to be replaced by 1976, this was not too much of a problem – sales were acceptable and the Marina was winning new customers for the company. The problem of course, was that the Marina may have been winning new sales the ADO16 buyers were deserting the company in large numbers. The two-prong Allegro-Marina attack on the small-medium market conceived by Stokes may have seemed like a good idea at the time, people were not inclined to buy them and the reason for that was quite obvious: The Marina may have had fleet-appeal (and not enough to win many sales from Ford), it certainly did not have private buyer appeal. The less said about the Allegro, the better!

As BLMC plunged deeper and deeper into crisis in 1974, work was started on the planned ADO77 Marina replacement. Because sales of the Morris Marina had never lived up to the heady expectations of it made during its development, the decision was made that the new car should follow the Cortina upmarket into the 2-litre class. Once BLMC became bankrupt and Ryder took over, the car was put under close scrutiny by management. Allegro and Marina most definitely were not earning their keep and were not making nearly enough money to fund the development of the ADO77 – and anyway, not only did the new car sit uncomfortably close in terms of size to the soon-to-appear Leyland ADO71 (18/22 Series, Leyland Princess), but practically mirrored the work that was going on over in Solihull on the SD2 Dolomite replacement. Needless to say, the ADO77 was dropped, which meant that the Marina was now on its own, for better or for worse. As it was, sales of the Marina continued to hold up well during the Seventies, generally holding third or fourth in the UK sales charts, but it did not disguise the fact that marketing-led development was no substitute for genuine product development and as time went on, the Marina's shortcomings were becoming increasingly evident.

As far as the development story of the Marina went, there was little to tell: nothing much happened until 1975, when the lightly-revised Series 2 version appeared, sporting a different range of trim designations and a revised dashboard. As Motor magazine surmised in their 1978 road test of the 1.8 HL, “Overall a disappointing car whose impressive performance is completely overshadowed by excessive noise levels. The top-of-the-range Marina that does not live up to Leyland's ‘Executive express’ tag. Dated suspension gives crude handling characteristics and mediocre roadholding. Moderately comfortable but driving position poor. A dated car that is way behind its competitors.”

The Marina's rivals were becoming increasingly sophisticated and now that the ADO77 was no more, the original car had nothing in its portfolio with which to fight the likes of the Cortina MkIV and the new new Opel-engineered Vauxhall Cavalier.

Development on the Marina was in the pipeline, but it was very much on a shoestring. In time for the 1978 NEC motor show, Austin-Morris announced the long-awaited O-Series engine and the first recipient for this OHC-power unit was to be the Princess followed by the Morris Marina. The O-Series engine initially conceived as an OHC version of the venerable B-Series engine, but soon developed into an entirely new engine, sharing no parts with its long-lived predecessor. The oddly-sized 1698cc engine eventually appeared on the market as an engine that was desperately in need of further development, seriously lacking refinement. That is not to say that it was not an improvement over the original, it was certainly more economical and produced enough power. Some cosmetic improvements were also incorporated into the design, with new bumpers and a rather naff black plastic chin-spoiler, but the effect did not disguise the fact that the Marina was now almost embarrassingly inept. As What Car magazine reported after their road test of the 1.7HL version in 1979 for their 1980 Car of The Year issue, “…the car showed evidence that some thought had gone into changes, but frankly not enough. The new ‘O’ Series ohc engine that now powers the bigger cars is a good deal better than its predecessor, but alongside other ohc units, is harsh, noisy and generally unrefined, though high gearing means motorway cruising is relatively peaceful. But the biggest complaint against the new car is the retention of its semi-elliptic rear suspension giving the car a terrible ride.”

The O-Series engine was not the last development of the by-then terminally-aged Marina: the new decade heralded the arrival of a new name and face: Ital.

Austin-Morris Managing Director, Ray Horrocks, knew that the Marina would need a showroom fillip in order to maintain sales impetus until the release of its replacement, the LM10 and LM11. The Longbridge drawing office headed by Harris Mann soon completed a neat facelift, which changed the look of the frontal aspect of the car (without any front panel changes) and transformed the rear view of the car, incorporating a higher boot-line and large Euro-standard wrap around lights. Despite the long-held belief that Ital Design were responsible for the revised styling of the new car, they were in fact somewhat less involved in the process – simply handling its productionisation. Of course, the story soon got out that the Morris Ital was actually the work of Giorgetto Giugiaro and, as one insider has subsequently said to me, "...why spoil the story with facts, we thought!"

Being limited, as they were, to a £5 million budget, BL's facelift went no further than these few, albeit distinctive, cosmetic changes. Apart from the deployment of the new A-Plus engine, which was shortly due to see service in the Austin Metro, there were no major engineering changes. The new engine may have afforded the Ital 12,000-mile service intervals, but it was certainly not enough to lift the car's chassis from a level of sub-mediocrity – and the car's humble origins were all-too apparent for everyone to see.

Needless to say, Ital Design did not appreciate one little bit the fact that their name was being attached to such a car, despite the fact that they allowed the original Morris Ital television advert to be filmed on their premises. Subsequently, Ital Design treated the Ital as something to be quickly forgotten – a non-event. By the time of the car's launch in June 1980, the existence of the LC10 was well-known throughout the industry and the Ital was viewed as something of an embarrassment for the company; something to remain clinging to life until the new wave of Michael Edwardes conceived cars hit the market in 1983.

Naming the Ital had proven to be a thorny issue for the marketing department: the initial plan was to call it the "Morris Marina Ital", that way acknowledging the major role the Italian styling house had in the car's conception. This plan was soon scuppered by the intervention of none other than Michael Edwardes, who insisted that the "Marina" moniker was dropped. To the marketing department's utter surprise, Austin-Morris got away with it – and the story that the Ital was the work of Giugiaro became legend.

Had the car not been renamed, however, expectations of it from the Press may not have been so high, but as it was, the 1971 vintage of the Ital was impossible to disguise. Austin-Morris were intelligent enough to realise this fact and unashamedly aimed the Morris Ital at the fleet market, citing its low running costs and simplicity of design as major selling points. The idea was that now Ford was moving towards front wheel drive with the new version of the Ford Escort, the Ital would offer an orthodox alternative for those fleet managers who still harboured fears that the added complexity of front wheel drive equalled grief in the service bays. Austin-Morris amazingly soldiered on with the car until 1984, when it was finally replaced by the Austin Montego. Unlike its predecessor, the Morris Minor, no-one grieved the passing of the ADO28.

Copyright © 2002 Keith Adams.