Remembering one of Britain’s best-selling cars | Axon’s Automotive Anorak

Last Sunday’s free-to-attend ‘Rule Britannia Sunday’ Breakfast Club, held at the Goodwood Motor Circuit over Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee bank holiday, made me realise just what an amazingly wide spread of car marques us Brits have been able to enjoy over the decades (as did the special Jubilee parade of iconic British cars down the Mall). Great Britain being particularly gifted at either making small and clever city cars, such as the original 1920s Austin Seven and subsequent BMC/BL Mini; sports cars, from AC to the Vauxhall VX220, via MG, Lotus, McLaren, Aston Martin and what have you. Then you have large, imposing and formal luxury cars, as optimised by Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Daimler, Bristol, Alvis and many others.

What us Brits aren’t so good at though, is mid-size cars. The vehicle types mastered by the Japanese, French and Germans, with their worthy but bland Toyota Carinas, Nissan Bluebirds, Honda Accords, Renault 21s, Peugeot 407s and VW Passats. Sure, we may have produced a few outstanding mid-range cars over the years, such as the successful Ford Cortina and Morris Minor, but for every decent family car we made, Britain also churned out quite a few ‘grey porridge’ duds. The Morris Marina/Ital, Austin Allegro and A70 Hereford and Hampshire, Hillman Minx and Avenger, Ford Corsair, Vauxhall Viva and Victor, and so on, springing to mind.

One real exception to this dreary list of English has-beens, though, is a model that dominated British new cars sales for almost a decade, bringing advanced design and engineering to the average UK family motorist. BMC’s vast ADO16 range, more familiar as the Austin-Morris 1100-1300, was offered in a bamboozling range of badge-engineered marques and models from the wide BMC/BL stable to keep brand loyalists happy. Be it a sporting MG 1100, a conservative Rlley Kestrel/1300, stiff-upper-lip Wolseley or luxury Vanden Plas Princess 1300.

Designed using Italian expertise at Pininfarina, combined with Mini-marvel Alec Issigonis’s engineering and packaging expertise, BMC’s first ADO16 model was launched 60 years ago in 1962 as the four-door Morris 1100. An Austin-badged 1100 version was introduced twelve months later, followed by MG, Vanden Plas, Wolseley and Riley derivatives. A two-door, an estate and automatic versions followed, all culminating in a more powerful 1300 engine option arriving in 1967, around the time that BMC was changing in to the larger and less harmonious British Leyland (BL) group.

An immediate success in both the UK and export markets, the BMC/BL ADO16 – to give the 1100/1300 range its collective programme name – was arguably Europe’s most advanced medium family car of its generation. It combined BMC’s long-proven A-Series engine, mounted transversely Mini-style, with a clever and comfortable Hydraulastic gas-filled suspension system, to give the compact a front-wheel-drive an almost-Citroen-rivaling ride quality, unseen at the time in other cars of this type.

The confusing six branded versions of the ADO16 (Austin, MG, Morris, Riley, Vanden Plas and Wolseley) soon became more complex when overseas derivatives of the model were introduced too, such as the Italian Innocenti IM3, Spanish Austin Victoria, South African Austin 11/55 and Apache, Australian Morris Nomad, and so on, with even a fibre-glass-bodied 1100 built and sold in Chile. To add to the confusion, the ADO16 became the best-selling car in Denmark for a few years, re-named as the Morris Marina, long before the rear-wheel-drive Marina we all know and lambast was introduced in 1971.

The complex hierarchy of the ADO16 family saw the base Austin and Morris 1100s (only identifiable by their differing grills and badging) as the entry models, bizarrely with two-door body shells initially only available for export markets. The faster and often two-toned MG 1100 offered the sportier motorist greater entertainment, but no rev counter set in the MG’s more traditional wooden dash. The Riley Kestrel version was mechanically based around the MG 1100, but with plusher upholstery and an authentic walnut dash panel, including a tachometer.

The Wolseley version was slightly less aspirational (but more affordable) than the Riley, although it did retain a wooden plank in front of the driver, plus the marque’s traditional chrome side stripes and illuminated Wolseley badge on the upright grille. For the final word in luxury though, the plush Vanden Plas Princess 1100 offered the ultimate sumptuous wood and leather interior, including fold-down walnut picnic tables in the rear of the front seats, resembling and smelling more like the inside of a Daimler or Bentley than a mid-size ‘mainstream’ family car.

With rust proving to be the ADO16’s enemy, the vast majority of the 2.1million+ models built between 1962-1974 have all but disintegrated, mainly due to the car’s front subframe and sills being particularly prone to corrosion. With such huge sales in period as the UK’s constant best-selling new car, the ADO16s survival rate is frighteningly low, as evidenced by just three examples appearing at Rule Britannia Sunday last weekend, including a very rare Downton-tuned Austin 1300. 

When BMC/BL introduced the more potent 1300 A-Series engine in 1967, ADO16 sales got their second wind. The then new sporting 1300 GT of 1969 gave the range a timely image boost, this four-door ‘performance’ model proving popular with its racy three-branch drilled sports sterling wheel and racy black vinyl roof. The GT derivative saw the ADO16 right though until production finished in 1974, the model still selling well, even in parallel to the new Austin Allegro that was introduced in the Summer of 1973 to ultimately replace the best-selling ADO16.

Now the stuff of legend, sadly, the strangely rotund Allegro was never a match for its class-leading ADO16 predecessor, failing to win friends and gain sales in the way of the earlier 1100/1300. Optimising all that was bad about BL and British cars of the 1970s and ‘80s, the Allegro suffered from the poor quality and industrial strikes and strife of its day. It failed to make its mark against more competent contemporary competitors such as the Alfa Romeo Alfasud, Citroen GS and Volkswagen Golf.  In such company, the poor Allegro never stood a chance, unlike the fine and refined ADO16 of the 1960s; a rare example of a truly Great British car.