Postby jeffremj » 23 Mar 2013 19:38
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Century Gothic, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Mildred</i>
Please pardon my intrusion on this excellent thread topic, but permit me this one small tangent. If one discounts the salted roads, body rot, the rainy cold climate, and other environmental factors, were British Leyland cars all that bad? <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Things weren't too bad considering! One problem was in-fighting, as summed up by Jaguar designers making sure the next Jag couldn't take a V-engine (they didn't want to have to use a Rover V8) - that turned out well for the now Indian company! Another 'problem' was that, for some weird reason, the UK market was dominated by company cars - this meant that to make money (company purchasers could get 50% off!) the cars were only designed to last 3 years - the point at which the company car would be replaced. IMO, this was the real problem for BL.
Regarding my 1980 TR7 which I bought in 1983; I was very annoyed when the rear wheel arch was perforated by rust at only 4 years old - outrageous!