Channel 5 - cars that made Britain great/Guilty pleasures...
 

So, classic Friday night in TV....tonight's episode includes a wee spot on the Prisoner and Portmeirion (As in " I am not a number, but my car is {an 8} ".

Also included the MG Maestro Turbo, definitely a guilty pleasure - my dad had one, and there's one for sale on eBay ! - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1989-MG-Ma...3D191277072572

Now on the Dolly Sprint! - luvverley... :D

I loved my Dolly! Only car I have ever bought new with my own money.
Though it was "only" an 1850HL with overdrive, still great fun to drive. +++

Got this in the planner ready to watch, my first car was an Austin Maestro 1.6 Vanden Plas, I loved it at the time, it was black but the woman in the computer used to tell you random stuff like the door being open and that there was no fuel while you were doing 70 down the M1 with a full tank.

Even worse was the XXX mint that was stuck in the air vents and sounded like the national lottery machine when the fan was on.

I always hankered for a British Racing Green MG Maestro - glad I never got one lol

Ah.. The Maestro... Could be worse.. I had a 2.0 Montego for a while, not even fuel injected.

At the risk of sounding like one of The Four Yorkshiremen, I had worse. I had the Montego's predecessor, the Morris Ital.




"Who'd a thought, thirty years ago, we'd all be sittin' here ....... " driving '8s? :D

I had two 2.0 (fuel-injected) Montego estates in sequence, fairly quick and handy with 3 young kids; I had the extra rear-facing seats in the back which got a fair bit of use on short journeys.

I learnt to drive in a base model Maestro with the 1.3 Litre engine. When I passed my test I went to the Austin dealer to look at buying one because I was familiar with it, I ended up buying a brand new Metro.

The Maestro was bad, but a lot of cars were back then. I remember driving through a puddle on a driving lesson, the HT system got soaked and we ground to a halt. The car was not even a year old, and would frequently stall when it was damp.

The Metro it turned out was just as bad, difficult to start in the wet and I was always under the bonnet with can of damp start to hand. The Metro was sold at 18months old and replaced by a Vauxhall Astra, much better and more reliable.

Its funny how we've had British Leyland as starts to our driving histories, Austin in particular as a brand, it must point to our patience with car problems nowadays.

My car after the Maestro was a MK1 1.6 Astra SRi (basically the same as the MK1 GTE but with a 1.6 carb engine, bodykit was all the same)

A vauxhall was a huge step up for me in terms of quality and reliability as you say

My first was a 1.3 mk 1 astra in pine green metallic, with lovely brown seats :)

My dad had a MK1 Astra, i remember the registration plate to this day. A544 RBM, it was a nice shade of yellow with the brown interior. I also remember the radio only did MW and LW, and the tape deck was not autoreverse. He did 60K miles in it, in just 18 months as he was a service engineer and it was replaced by a Cavalier at that point.