Talk:Morris Marina

Hyundai Pony
I understand the Hyundai Pony is actually based on the P82 model, intended to replace the Marina but never made, which had McPherson struts and boxed in sections for the rear struts rather than the spine frame.101.178.163.92 (talk) 04:51, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Anonymous contribution
An anonymous editor completely replaced the page text with this. I'm reverting, but we should see if there are any facts in here that should be inserted. &mdash;Morven 21:42, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

AUSTIN/MORRIS/LEYLAND MARINA (1971-1980)

The first new car launch by British Leyland was the Morris Marina, which replaced the classic Minor early in 1971. Although it used a larger, more spacious and comfortable body, the Marina used much of the Minor's running gear which had been around for more than 20 years.

British Leyland sold the Morris Marina as a three-door coupe, four-door saloon and five-door estate. The base engine was a lethargic but economical 1.3 unit from the Austin 1300. In 1972 a 1.8 twin-carburettor engine from the Austin 1800 was added to the Marina range, giving more in the way of refinement and performance. Prices were also reasonable.

But the Marina was never a class-leader and this was down its uninspired design and suspect quality. British Leyland was now marketing Morris as its 'conventionally engineered' marque and few cars could have been more conventional than the rear-drive Marina.

In spite of these weaknesses, British Leyland had some success in producing versions of the Marina for foreign markets. The Morris Marina was sold as an Austin in the USA and a Leyland in Australia.

By the end of the 1970's the Morris Marina was looking very dated and in need of a replacement.

MORRIS ITAL (1980-1984)

British Leyland turned to Giugiaro's ItalDesign studio for a restyle of the ageing Marina. The result was an updated version of the original car which looked quite different on the outside and had a new dashboard on the inside, but when the car came back it changed very little underneath. It had a new name - the Morris Ital. It was slightly more modern than the Marina, but still nowhere near as good as the new Vauxhall Cavalier and Ford Sierra. And the car's roots from 1971 were still showing up strongly.

In a bid to boost sales, British Leyland extended the Ital range to a 2.0 engined model in 1982. The new engine was sourced from the larger Rover SD1 and gave very good levels of refinement and performance. But the rest of the car was nowhere near the top of the large-medium sector in terms of competency and production ceased in August 1984.

The end of Ital also meant the end of the Morris marque after 72 years. British Leyland soon disbanded to become Austin-Rover.

Design inaccuracies
It is commonly believed that the Morris Marina carried over it's suspension etc from the Morris Minor. This is not the case.

Starting at the front, none of the suspension or braking is exchangeable with the Minor directly, although the Morris Minor modders use the Marina suspension legs and brakes with modifications. The similarities are that they both have torsion bars and trunnions - but you could equally argue that they are in fact sharing suspension with the Jaguar E type and the MGC. The unconfirmed suggestions is that there was a McPherson strut front end originally designed which was not used, but turned up later on the TR7. Having compared the bodywork around the front wheel arches of both - I for one believe the story. The TR& shares front wheel bearings with the Marina.

The disc brakes share ther Girling calipers with the Ford Cortina MK2 and a host of other late 60s early 70s UK cars of all manufacturing groups.

The rear suspension is leaf sprung, which also shares its dimensions (2" wide) and rubber bushes with those of the Ford Capri - who was that designer again? The Capri base was taken from the Cortina Mk2.

The steering ball joints are shared with the Hillman Avenger and Talbot Sunbeam.

The rear axle is the same as the Triumph Dolomite and the 4 speed TR7, but with different brackets. However as both of these came later, it is more correct to say that they use Marina axles and it's nothing like the Morris Minor.

The 1.8 B series engine became the 1.7 & 2.0 'O' series, which is really an overhead cam B series - they share the same sump and engine mounts for example, the cam shaft was moved from low on the side, onto the top. The even more recent 'M16' & 'T16' engines can be said to be 'O' series with twin cams as the block is almost identical.

The gearbox is used in the Triumph Spitfire 1500 & Dolomite 1500/1850 and some Sherpa vans.

Really the Marina was a bitsa with input from throughout the UK motoring industry. As it was a volume car (1.3 million all told), many other vehicles used parts originally designed for the Marina as it created good economies of scale.

Chris Weedon

I don't like Marinas
My father was a Visiting Professor in England from 1977-1978; we thought we knew how bad automotive junk could be since GM was near its nadir -- until we got to know the Morris Marina. Aside from the many other negative attributes listed in the article, its awful manual transmission and underpowered engine meant it literally could not get up steep hills with all five of us on board, so many times everybody but the driver had to get out and walk up the hill. Once a colleague borrowed the car for a short errand, and when he returned he told my father that was the worst gearshift he had ever used. I've not had the pleasure of driving a Yugo, so I dunno which was worse -- I do recall I was in grad school at Duke when Hurricane Hugo came through NC, and the Car Talk guys on NPR joked about "driving through Hugo in a Yugo" as the ultimate automotive hell. 71.235.75.86 (talk) 04:43, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

strange number
I read in a Classic car magazine that the 745 figure is in actual fact for the Morris Ital which was only in production for a couple of years (and was highly unpopular) i'd guess that there are about Three to Four thousand Marinas left on the road (and probably many more in garages waiting to be brought back to life)

Top Gear and the Morris Marina
I added in the post-demise section information about the test (and destruction) of Marinas in the 12th Series of the show Top Gear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.87.25.19 (talk) 19:10, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I dont really think this should be right at the top, if your going to do it at least make it longer then 1 and a bit lines.82.7.21.40 (talk) 20:22, 20 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It doesn't add anything to the article so I have removed it. Malcolma (talk) 20:29, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Development
"It meant that the Marina (a car intended to be basic and conventional) cost more to develop than the Austin Allegro, its technically and aesthetically advanced stablemate."

The Marina was developed _before_ the Allegro, so some of the design of new production processes and parts were used in the Allegro.

The Marina is NOT a Morris Minor. It has a completely new body (that is fully spot welded, not using subframes like all previous BMC cars), made on a completely new assembly line with new machines and production processes. Even the way the workers were paid changed ; changing from piece rates to hourly rates (this was the main reason there were so many strikes at Cowley). The only similarity is the front suspension, which is not, however, interchangeable.

I really think the Top Gear references are superflous and have no place in an encylopaedia.203.26.122.12 (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Ford Fan ; non-neutral POV
Base version UK market Marinas featured drum brakes, with front disc brakes available as an optional extra.[11] This kept costs down, but by 1971 it was one of several mechanical features which made the car appear dated when compared with competitor products from Ford who dominated the Marina's market sector.

The gearbox was a four speed manual unit with synchromesh on all gears except reverse and was derived from the Triumph Toledo unit, controlled by a floor mounted lever.

The Ford Cortina and Ford Escort had three speed gearboxes (with no syncromesh between first and second) and drum brakes all around on the base model. They also had rear leaf springs, just like the Marina. The 'dated' comments were related to other BL cars, not those offered by Ford or Vauxhall.

I'm not sure that this biased section adds anything to an already overly long article.789 underscore (talk) 06:18, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Competitors
"The car was launched just as its competitors Vauxhall's Viva, Ford's Escort, and Hillman's (Rootes Group) Avenger were also launched into the hotly contested family car market."

They are all small cars, the BL offering was the Allegro. The competitors to the Marina were the Ford Cortina, Vauxhall Victor and Hillman Hunter. Of those three, only the Cortina was a truly new design in the early 1970s. Changed.123.3.16.124 (talk) 14:28, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Grille


Some early marinas had a vertically divided grille, whilst some had a full width grille with a chrome trim rectangle within it, whilst some had a body colour panel within that rectangle. Anybody know If the differences were optional, or linked to particular spec or trim options? D.C.Rigate (talk) 17:05, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Originally there were three different grills according to engine.


 * The 1300 grill involved a lot of chrome coloured horizontal bars and was split down the middle like a wannabe Pontiac


 * The 1800 grill involved the painted horizontal body coloured bar.


 * The 1800 TC - same engine with an extra carb - involved a slightly more elaborate horizontal painted bar, normally painted black, with TC written on it.


 * After a bit - the wiki entry here says it was in 1975 - they did a face lift which introduced as a front grill horizontal bar filled with little chrome coloured horizontal bars, as demonstrated by the car in the info box (in 22 Oct 2014) at the top right of the Marina "Article") page.


 * Regards Charles01 (talk) 18:35, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

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dubious assertion
"The company's products aimed at the mass-market consisted of the Morris Minor, dating from 1948, and the 'Farina' range of mid-sized Austin and Morris saloons that were a decade old. "

This is when the BL merger occurred in 1968.

What about the Mini, the 1100/1300  and the 1800 "land crab" ?? They were all in production in 1968 and were new models than the original Minor  and the c.1959 "Farina" models.Lathamibird (talk) 08:45, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a ridiculous assertion. Both the Minor and the Oxfords/Cambridges had a rapidly diminishing share of the market by the late 60s and were perceived as very old fashioned. The 1100/1300 was the UK's most popular car in the 60s and was quite technically advanced - basically, a big Mini. The Marina was deliberately under engineered because the new BL management thought that was what fleet buyers wanted. This was one of a number of idiotic management decisions taken in the decade after the merger. --Ef80 (talk) 16:14, 26 July 2023 (UTC)