SPORTING CHANCE

ew would deny that the 1970s were unkind to the British sports car. At the start of the decade there was already a growing sense that the car was less a glorious expression of personal freedom but growing social and environmental issue. A few years later came the Energy Crisis which plunged the Western world into economic turmoil and proved that petrol would not always be cheap and readily available to slosh into the tank of a sleek-bodied burbling roadster with multiple carburettors. Virtually all the famous sports car makers were now part of British Leyland, which presented a tough set of circumstances as the group, labouring under huge losses from its main carmaking divisions, was forced to neglect the profitable but peripheral sports cars.