NATIONALISED TREASURES

Everyone who has ever expressed an interest in cars will have at some point received at Christmas one of those hastily-compiled little books usually titled something like ‘World’s worst cars’. Before even reading the first page you know the lazily-compiled content will include more than a few products of the British Leyland era, usually the Allegro (“The only car to have a square steering wheel” it’ll probably tell you) and the Marina, backed up with some other easy targets like the Bond Bug and the Reliant Robin.

The reality however is that many of the oft-derided BL cars were entirely appropriate for the market at which they were aimed and the real crime is in many cases the lack of development they received, leaving them to soldier on until hopelessly outclassed. The Marina for example was a worthy effort at matching Ford’s UK fleet offerings which under the showroom gloss were often woefully basic in their mechanical make-up. Similarly, on paper the Allegro is streets ahead of the contemporary Escort in many ways even if it fell down in other areas.

Here then is our pick of the high and low points of products which wore the swirling plughole badge of BL.

MORRIS MARINA

FOR: As the stopgap it was meant to be, it was actually a very clever use of the parts bin

AGAINST: Its 1976 replacement never materialised, leaving it hopelessly outdated by its end in 1984 as the Ital

The Marina project stemmed from the Ford Cortina – while the BMC 1100 and 1300 might have been