Following Dave’s flight of fancy Prime Find last week – and you can’t have too many photographs of a Lamborghini Miura, can you? – we have plummeted back down to earth this week with a car that could hardly be further removed from that fabulous Gandini creation in almost every respect. In fact, at the Miura’s mid estimate of EUR 850,000, you could also – if you so wished – buy every current on the road example of every variant of this week’s Prime Find, and still have change for a Maserati Ghibli, a long-hood Porsche 911S and a Mercedes-Benz 280SL Pagoda. All in excellent condition. Not a choice I am ever going to have to make, unfortunately.
So, back on earth… as I believe I may have mentioned before, most recently just a couple of weeks ago, in fact, in a previous life I worked for British Leyland for just over 5 years. Those 5 years coincided with some of the most tumultuous in the company’s history.
During this period, strikes and walkouts were a regular feature, as were large-scale redundancies. The company changed its name and structure several times – in 1979 (the year I joined as a wet-behind-the-ears graduate trainee) from British Leyland to BL Ltd to BLMC, and in 1982, its car brands came under the BL Cars Ltd umbrella. Within BL Cars, Austin Morris and Jaguar Rover Triumph were themselves operating as separate divisions. Shortly thereafter, BL Cars Ltd was renamed the Austin Rover Group, with Jaguar siphoned off as Jaguar Car Holdings, before being sold off and privatised in 1984. With the Morris and Triumph brands also effectively retired that year, that left Austin and Rover as the only remaining car brands. Land Rover and Freight Rover – Sherpa vans and small trucks, basically – were rolled in with the truck division. As for MG, that famous old name became nothing much more than a performance badge on the sporty versions of various Austin saloons, the Abingdon factory that produced MGB’s and Midgets being shut down in October 1980. Confused? Many of us certainly were, and we worked there.
While all this was going on, the company embarked on a major new model launch programme to replace what had become a confusing and increasingly outdated range that was losing market share year-on-year. Launches that took place in my time there included the Metro (as hyped a car launch as there could be), the Morris Ital – a very minor facelift of the Marina – the Austin Ambassador (effectively a face-lifted Princess), the first two fruits of the collaboration with Honda, the Triumph Acclaim and Rover 200, the Austin Maestro, and in the Spring of 1984, the Austin Montego – the subject of our Prime Find this week.
The Montego was designed primarily to appeal to the fleet market, where it would come up against established and strong competition from the Ford Sierra – sales now recovering after a shaky couple of years – and the very successful Vauxhall Cavalier Mk2, so it needed to be good; we’ll come back to that.
Which would you choose as your company car?
The launch took place at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes – a place I got to know well in my later career in broadcast media – and I got to stay in the renowned Intercontinental Carlton Hotel (whose private beach was used to shoot Elton John’s video for I’m Still Standing the previous year). Ok, I had to share a room with a colleague, but still – the Carlton! I was impressed, anyway, but I was still young.
The presentation itself was spectacular, with Montego’s floating down onto the stage in darkness on hydraulic platforms and fleet buyers were let loose in our demonstrators around the Riviera while their wives and partners were taken to Grasse – considered to be the world capital of perfume by those who know about these things – sexism was alive and well in 1984.
The Montego was available with a range of engines starting with the venerable 1.3-litre A-series, through the new 1.6-litre S-series and 2.0-litre, with a turbocharged version of the latter appearing in the MG Montego the following year. Trim levels reflected the standard fleet structure – base, L, HL, HLS, luxurious Van den Plas and high-performance MG badged models, which also featured – for a while – a controversial “talking dashboard”.
Now I’ve not been one to pour praise over BL’s cars – indeed, some – hello Morris Ital – are worthy only of scorn. However, I drove Montegos, Sierras and Cavaliers – all cooking models – over a period of the mid-1980’s and while the Cavalier was perhaps the best of the three, the Montego was not significantly inferior, and it was no worse to drive than a Sierra. It’s looks – well, obviously these are subjective, but it was – still is – a better looking car than the Sierra in my eyes and for its time, reasonably modern and clean, especially the estate.
Unfortunately, despite all the turmoil and change at the company, some things remained the same when it came to quality and reliability, and the Montego, like so many BL cars before it, suffered badly in this regard, with problems related to the plastic body-coloured bumpers and the synthesised voice dash, this latter feature being dropped after only a short while.
The bulk of any major corporate fleet was usually made up of “road warrior” cars in the 1.6 range, and our Prime Find is one of those – a cooking 1.6L with the only optional extra being it’s metallic gold over dark grey paint – but what makes this particular Montego so interesting is it’s low mileage and exceptional (if we take the seller’s word for it) condition. It’s also – considering that over 436,000 were sold in the UK between 1984 and 1995, with 569,000 being produced in total – now remarkably rare, with a precipitous decline in numbers over the last 15 years in particular. In 2006 there were just under 9,000 “in working order”; there are now a mere 39 on the road – of all variants – with another 229 SORN, presumably waiting to be worked on by a dedicated owner or just waiting… indeed, the Montego was one of the UK’s 10 most scrapped cars in the thirty year period up to 2006, according to Auto Express – particularly depressing when you realise Montego’s were only on the road for 22 of those years.
Anyway, back to our Prime Find… and unusually for a private sale, there is quite a lot of information in the advert, which you can see here. This 1988 car is unrestored and has just 19,265 miles under its wheels – a fraction more than 600 miles a year.
It’s one of just 11 1.6L’s left on the road, and is described in effusive and glowing words by the vendor with regard to its condition, both in terms of its bodywork – bar a couple of minor blemishes to its paintwork – and particularly its interior, a sea of cream and beige – “exemplary”, according to the vendor. The seats are in a cream fabric and the rear ones look unused. There are no cracks in the dash, door cards are “perfect” and all the instruments work properly. It’s also claimed that the car drives extremely well and starts immediately.
The car has spent the last few years as effectively a museum piece, and apparently would pass for a car just a couple of years old in terms of its overall condition. The ownership history is known, there is a history file, albeit a relatively small one, and the car is MOT’d until March 2021.
While there is a great deal of textual information in the advert, there are relatively few photos, but as is our usual practice, we have borrowed these.
Now as regular readers will know, here at ViaRETRO our mantra is “Any classic is better than no classic”, and while this is not a car I would ever buy, it is most certainly a potentially trouble-free (having been so carefully looked after) and budget-friendly way for someone to get into the classic car hobby we all share, regardless of what car we drive.
For a Montego, it’s relatively expensive at £5,250 – and as always, inspection is highly recommended before making any purchase – but for such a low-mileage car in supposedly first-class condition, not so expensive. It’s more exclusive than many a Ferrari or Aston Martin, and would be a certain contender for the Concours de l’Ordinaire at the Hagerty Festival of the Unexceptional, one of the ViaRETRO team’s favourite events, although it has sadly had to be cancelled this year due to the coronavirus lockdown – but maybe for next year?
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us be inspired by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk