Austin Maxi

[keef]

On 25 March 2019 at 10:53 PM, quicksilver said:

CFP214T (1750)

 

[lesapandre]

ADO14 Austin prototype 1965 at Longbridge. Short front end and distinctive Austin character grille. 

Short front gives the car more of a 'bulldog' stance than later long nosed iteration. Really close to a grown-up 1100 - which is what it was intend to be. Would this have succeeded if launched in 1966 as the number plate implied? 

The short hood 1100 found no lack of buyers - why were BMC/Leyland so nervous of this. Too close to the 1800? But as a piece of unified design seems to work well. Very nice. Too advanced for '66? Possibly the work of Dick Burzi?

1971 Autobianchi and Fiat 127. BMC were not so far off in their thinking about what a European car should look like in future - short bonnet - no front overhang - and keeping the headlamps as expressed elements in the silhouette to add character did the Fiat no harm in terms of sales

[ETCHY]

ADO14 prototype is very Austin 1800 though.

Those doors & the windscreen angle it imposes were difficult to counter. Once the wheelbase & screen angle are set you're a bit stuck as to what you can do !

I prefer the production front end personally.

The Autobianchi is lovely & that's what a Mini replacement should have looked like. Innocenti's version in the 70's with a hatchback also showed how it could have looked.

[keef]

Another cable changer has shown up. Last pictured in Chippenham. Is anyone out that way and/or knows about it or has seen it? Last change of Keeper/logbook looks to be July 2012.

 

[ETCHY]

Wow that deserves to be saved.

I like the giffer plastic wind deflector on the drivers window. Collect 100 bonus points !

[Billy - Medhurst]

2 hours ago, keef said:

 

OI! - That's my picture. I believe the suspension has been fixed on that now but it was outside that garage for other work.

[keef]

13 minutes ago, ETCHY said:

Wow that deserves to be saved.

Apparently the picture was taken on the then owner's farm. Apparently he used to hire vehicles out for film work. Not sure if he still owns it or if the current owner bought it in 2012.

[Timewaster]

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzrEHLUKrdmHnjxw5

 

 

Been there as long as I can remember. 

[keef]

13 minutes ago, Billy - Medhurst said:

OI! - That's my picture. I believe the suspension has been fixed on that now but it was outside that garage for other work.

Looks a lovely example.

Here's my russet brown one. 

 

[lesapandre]

17 minutes ago, ETCHY said:

Wow that deserves to be saved.

I like the giffer plastic wind deflector on the drivers window. Collect 100 bonus points !

GB sticker too - been away...if only for a booze cruise...or did it go down to the S. of France one summer?

[keef]

17 minutes ago, Timewaster said:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/xzrEHLUKrdmHnjxw5

 

 

Been there as long as I can remember. 

Odd as clicking on the link just takes you to the top of this page??? If I quote then copy the typed link it takes me to Goole maps app. This appears to be a white Maxi2. Do you have any earlier pictures, showing the reg. no.? There used to be a way of looking at earlier versions, but I can't see tge option here.

[Billy - Medhurst]

35 minutes ago, keef said:

Looks a lovely example.

 

Its not mine but taken for my spotted thread I used to have on here - I think you have seen it on flickr and got it in the maxi group pictures there too.

[ETCHY]

39 minutes ago, keef said:

Looks a lovely example.

Here's my russet brown one. 

 

I really like that photo. If it wasn't for the modern cars and wheelie bin, the Maxi with makeshift trailer looks like the kind of thing I'd have seen in the 1980s ?

[Timewaster]

38 minutes ago, keef said:

Odd as clicking on the link just takes you to the top of this page??? If I quote then copy the typed link it takes me to Goole maps app. This appears to be a white Maxi2. Do you have any earlier pictures, showing the reg. no.? There used to be a way of looking at earlier versions, but I can't see tge option here.

In Street View if you go down the side turn opposite and turn back, there is a shot with a number plate still fitted, but sadly blurred out. 

It's a village I pass through occasionally and I seem to remember there used to be a brown one there too under a CPT. 

The place has the look of a hoarders den. 

 

[keef]

37 minutes ago, Billy - Medhurst said:

Its not mine but taken for my spotted thread I used to have on here - I think you have seen it on flickr and got it in the maxi group pictures there too.

I'm sure it is. There's also a gallery for russet brown Maxis.

 

[bunglebus]

Found this one outside a scrapyard in Rushden a few years ago

 

Photo1188_zpsvnyms5xl by RS, on Flickr

 

This one on the road in the same town

 

20180223_122333 by RS, on Flickr

[ETCHY]

Seems funny seeing a white one, I don't recall seeing many in white.

[lesapandre]

The biggest selling car for a lot of the 60's was the BMC 1100-1300 range. Being unconventional was not necessarily a handicap to success. 

Maxi had a lot of other initial launch problems that deterred buyers - thought they did get sorted. Its just that BLMC's attention got then diverted elsewhere.

Bit company mergers cannot always be a good thing. 

In the US the classic case is that of Studebaker and Packard which finished Packard pretty quickly and in longer term benefited Studebaker little.

[keef]

4 hours ago, ETCHY said:

Seems funny seeing a white one, I don't recall seeing many in white.

Here's my 1974 glacier white one. :-

 

[keef]

5 hours ago, bunglebus said:

This one on the road in the same town

 

20180223_122333 by RS, on Flickr

 

[Skut]

My family never had a Maxi but I did have a 28 days later moment with one. On a walk in the Midlands countryside in the late 80s we stopped on a bridge over a brand new unopened dual carriageway stretching into nearby hills. Then a single dark green Maxi emerged from underneath us in the fast lane and sped away into the hills.  

Probably just a roadworkers car but the incongruity of an old car alone on a brand new motorway or dual carraigeway (can't remember which) was striking. 

[keef]

10 hours ago, Timewaster said:

In Street View if you go down the side turn opposite and turn back, there is a shot with a number plate still fitted, but sadly blurred out. 

Think it is this one. :-

 

Off the road for almost the same time it was on it.

 

PLB 942W

✗ Untaxed

Tax due: 
1 December 2000

Incorrect tax status?

MOT

No details held by DVLA

Incorrect MOT status?

[Timewaster]

That's the one! 

[DSdriver]

I might have said this before but will repeat for those like me with memory problems, one thing I can remember is the Maxi when first launched with fully reclining seats to provide a makeshift bed being described as "the ideal car for a young man about to start a family"

[ETCHY]

Mmm it would appear there's actually lots of white ones I just haven't bloody noticed them ?

[keef]

On 25 March 2019 at 10:53 PM, quicksilver said:

DKN30T (1500)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/amancalledalex/14464047066/ 

[keef]

 

On 25 March 2019 at 10:53 PM, quicksilver said:

BBX842V (1750)

 

[keef]

On 26 March 2019 at 2:58 PM, Amishtat said:

Saw this one near Braintree a few years ago, think it was in use but never saw it again.

Still around. Here it is at Cowley last year. :-

 

 

[Amishtat]

That's pleasing, it looked endearingly scruffy when I saw it. Mu uncle went through four of these during the seventies /early eighties, his last was a late chrome bumpered example in denim blue which he sold to my grandparents' Polish neighbours in 1984. I can't remember the registration but the wife was killed in it by a drunk driver in 1989.  On a different tack, and my apologies if this has cropped up already, but I'm sure I heard a tale that some of the early 1500s had the letters on the bonnet reading AUTSIN. Was this a thing or just apocryphal? 

[keef]

On 25 March 2019 at 10:53 PM, quicksilver said:

CGL605V (1750, HLS lookalike)

http://www.austinmaxiclub.org/forsale/carsandparts.htm 13/04/2017