The 206 plant is to close, more bad news for the UK car industry

Hard question but for a long time certainly not the Brits. Even now I think the few cars we do make are better than the yank mobiles.

I know Jaguar, Land Rover, Lotus, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin etc are no longer British owned but they make some very nice cars all to a better standard than most American cars.

 

I quite like the lardy ass styling at least you can't confuse them with anything else. Though I think the Triumph TR7 is cool so maybe I'll shut up now.

The Morris Minor was probably a world class leading car but I'm pretty sure nothing came out of BL of any note. For instance Mk1 Golf or a Morris Marina, my dad of course bought the Morris. Oh the fun as it tried to fall off the road at the slightest sniff of rain or ice......

 

But a Polo MK1 or a Metro MK1?

The Marina was just a shockingly awful car.

The Metro, Montego and Meastro's were all decent cars at the time, not class leaders but my grandads Montego was perfectly reliable even when it got to 150,000 miles, it was the typical British rust that killed it although I think the engine was also pretty much stuffed.

I still think the Brits are amazing engineers we are just useless at running big engineering companies such as car companies.

 

The Metro, Montego and Meastro's were all decent cars at the time
No they weren't! They were piles of crap!

 

When they were new they were pretty good, the problem was they rusted but so did a lot of cars at that time. The Meatro was especialy a good car, it was a good handeler and had very good passive safety for the time.

The 1990 Metro was a very very good cars round the corners, it was a shame it turned out ot be a cramped death trap though.

 

Edit please ignore me, I am just trying to stick up for the poor British motors as much as possible and I guess we can't hide how bad the Meastros really were

 

I'll see your Marina (POS of the highest order), but raise you an Austin/Morris/Wolsely 1800 - the car that got the nickname "the land crab" for good reason. Had a very fond memory of looking at all the other cars sliding off the road during the 1981 blizzards while my dad casually drove past with no problem whatsoever.

Shame the hydrolastic suspension in ours was dicky, and then there was the infamous BL rust (surprise surprise).

We hired a Maestro in christmas 1984 - it wasn't that bad, and had a digital radio