No piano was harmed in the making of this video.

"My heart is sore, my Marina is no more It was the 1.8 with the optional rear armrest And now those Top Gear wazzocks have dropped a piano on its roof I hate James May, and the other two But mainly James May I want my Morris back" -Carla Bruni

Watching the marinas driving in the sea, all I could think about rust!

You forgot the 1.5 diesel versions produced in Portugal. They was made in Setubal, a town south of Lisbon. Those cars was very popular as taxis. They was small enought for the Lisbon narrow old streets and delivery a good diesel economy. A friend of mine had a Marina diesel in 1994. It was is everyday car and i remember that it was reliable. I believe that Setubal plant did reenforce the car for the heavier engine and made some other improvements. Even today is possible to find saloons, vans and pickups in portuguese second hand market.

Such a shame that Britain's space program ended with the Black Arrow launch of the Prospero satellite - if Britain had launched a manned space vehicle, I feel sure it would have had Marina door handles...

It was a safety feature: It can be quite lethal jumping out of a car door at 90 mph!

I always remember seeing The Spy Who Loved Me in the cinema with my parents and brother in the late 1970’s and the classic scene when the Lotus comes out the water…and my father saying; a British car and the sea were never a good combination. Especially when it has Morris Marina parts (including the door handles)

"BMC didn't see the benefit of sharing platforms between it's marques"... pretty much sums up their success really 🤣🤣

I've had 3 Marina's, one being an 1800 TC coupe, never had a single problem with them, I really liked them, not quite as good as the Escort but not awful. I miss basic cars!

Surely saying "if you drive your Marina at 90 miles per hour" is a bit like saying "if you sail your elephant across the atlantic"...?

Thank you for this trip down memory lane. My dad bought an ealy L-reg orange Marina brand new. It was his pride and joy and he kept it going until the mid-00's when failing eyesight forced him to sell it. Although us kids (& later grand kids) constantly took the micky out of it & him, for his love of it, that poor old much maligned Marina out lived so many of our cars. Testiment, perhaps, to the benefits of simple, cheep & readily available spare parts. For all its failings that old Marina was spacious, robust and easily serviceable. A good, if not brilliant, affordable, British family car. Not many of those around these days!

My mates dad bought him an ex-water board Ital van when he passed his test. It was utterly reliable and only let him down when he drove it through some flood water. We went everywhere in that van.

I worked at the rover SD1 plant in Solihull in 1979, I stayed for 6 months and during that time I never worked a full week. We had a 1 day strike every week in support of marine workers, and then we had lightning strikes with walk outs at the show of hands. It was a shame poor cars , poor management , poor worker relationships, just a disaster!

I quite like the Morris Ital, it's quite a clean design. Also, the black Morris Marina that Clarkson dropped the piano on was saved by a friend of mine. Completely rebuilt it and saved it. Take that Clarkson! And Steinway & sons!

I was the young engineer who happened to be standing up when Ray Bates the director of Engineering asked me if I could "calculate suspension" as the press were about to slate the 1.8 Marina for poor handling. I proceeded to write a Fortran program to plot camber angle change with suspension movement. I plotted graphs for popular BL models and the Marina was almost a mirror image of the better handling ones. It was then a matter of what could be changed to improve things. This lead to increasing the size of the trunnion connecting the lower arm to the king pin. About 1.5 inches was added. Some experimental parts were made and as a reward I was allowed to go to the Dunlop test track as I recall which was a disused airfield so a test driver could drive before and after versions between cones to see if there was an improvement. There was so the cars were modified. So if you look under a 1.8TC that is my 1.5 inches of which I am proud. Such was the state of engineering at BL so I moved to Volvo which was a revelation.

Marina door handles still live on today, on the outside of rear emergency doors of Optare town buses.

Marina 1.7HLS was my first car.....the word "trunnions" immediately comes to mind along with keeping a couple of paving slabs in the boot to rectify the wayward handling. Everyone should hone their driving skills in a rear wheel drive car.

They played the stop-gap card for like 20 years... That’s my kind of procrastination.

As a kid; my father bought our first new car; an Austin A30, that was Light Green in colour. I loved that little car and I remember dad who was a Marine Engineer servicing this car himself; and periodically pulled the engine down to what he called "Decarbonising" the valves so you could say I developed my love of working on engines back in 1952 at 6 years of age. Dad sold that car and purchased an Austin A50 (Black in colour). That too served us well, and upon the introduction by Austin of the A55 (Farina) dad bought one of those as well. In 1961, he sold the vehicle as we left for Australia that year. The name Austin lived with me and on turn ing 18 years of age and obtaining my Drivers' Licence in Victoria (Aust) I looked out for a suitable Austin to purchase however; I had saved up enough money to buy a Brand spanking new Holden EH Station wagon that cost me £1,0230.00.00 (Aust £) in December 1964. I had travelled over 129,000 miles in that vehicle and traded it in on a Brand New Morris 1100. Wow, what a car that was. I used to travel between Canberra (where I was living at the time) and Melbourne every fortnight and got some 50 MPG out of it on a round trip of 960 Miles when I travelled to see my parents. The hydrolastic suspension was brilliant, and the car very comfortable. Progressing from there to the Austin 1800 Mk 1 was also a dream. Following my marriage in September 1972, my wife and I bought a Brand New BL MARINA. That's when our problems started. The bloody thing was in and out of the dealers workshops every three weeks with engine problems, and the final straw came when we were travelling to my wife's home town 200 Kms away when the hood lining suddenly collapsed. The disc brakes were shockers and had to be machined more times than I had hot meals. I eventually got rid of the damn thing. As a matter of fact; the Car Salesman (who WAS a family friend) did tell me before i had purchased the Marina, that it was build on the same platform as a Morris Minor and had Morris Minor suspension. Stupid me never test drove the car before buying it. As a matter of fact, I was intending to buy a new car just yesterday as I can still get a good second hand price on my Mercedes E280 Avant Garde, and we had settled on a HYUNDAI but given that you mentioned HYUNDAI had built Morris Minor technology into the ELANTRA; I have changed my mind and will now got for a Toyota Land Cruiser. At least you cannot kill a Toyota.

A few actually made it state side as the Austin Marina. A neighbor had an orange one. My dad made fun of the car... mostly because they were cooky neighbors. We lived in the North Carolina mountains. I can’t imagine where they had to go to get work done. It’s the only one I ever remember seeing in the USA

My first car was also a Marina and it was fine. Totally reliable.

I owned a marina in the early 80s loved it

Brightwells online auction have last week just sold a 1979 Morris Marina 1.3 for £6076, these rare vehicles are now commanding serious money.Thankyou for the informative vid!

I have had 3 Marinas and 1 Ital. Loved them all.

Genius shot of that daily mail frontpage, nudge, nudge..😁

>see Morris Marina >wait for the piano to fall

My first car was also a Marina. Yellow and later we installed a Datsun 1200 Y engine. Ran very well and a perfect car for a student.

"He went down to the Seaman's Mission, but it's not there any more - it's just a Marina". "Well can't he kip in the back of that?"

Hello and thanks for the video. I had Marina 1300 Coupe 1975 model 1980s when I was studuying as an engineer. The university was in another town here in Finland. Me and my friends commuted every day 70 km forth and back with the green Marina. Altough its many smaller problems it newer stopped on the road at let us down! We had lots of fun moments as well. Just one example. First the fuel indicator broke up. Ok. I started to calculate using km meter. Then broke down the km meter and I had to start keep books distances driven and have the spare canister of fuel wirh us. One day I heard loud cracking noise and the car started leaning right. Front right spring has ripped off from its attacment and there was a big hole in the floor. When welding it we almost burned the Marina. However, I graduated as Mechanical Engineer from the Technical Institute of Kotka. I still miss this peculiar car.🙄😄 Best Regards Veijo

My first car was a 1.3L Marina and I loved it! Never let me down. Replaced one trunion and one leaf spring. People slagging it off, frankly have no idea what they're talking about.

The Morris Maori, now that would have been a laugh in 1970’s New Zealand!

My first car was also a Morris Marina 1.8HL . My parents bought it from my brother and had it when I was 15.He had a minor crash on the front which my parents paid for new panels. It was originally brown but when I started work had it sprayed red. I actually liked it and learnt so much on it

You can't have a Morris Marina without an old piano falling on it.

After watching many stories and videos on BL, BL had talented engineers and designers, let down by the constraints put on them by shocking management, grippy accountants and a pissed off work force. Any ground breaking design was destroyed by the cost cutting chainsaw, any attempt at modern forward thinking was slapped down by a staid old fashioned super conservative management. Its like BL was sabotaged from within by total managerial incompetence. The original design of the Austin Allegro was stunning, the end result was a cost cutting turd, shaped by a grey old fuddy duddy management and Dilbert in accounts. Engineers and designers make and build cars, like in Germany. In BL they were designed by accountants and out of touch old fashioned managerial fossils. The work force were not innocent though, striking for no bog roll in the toilets or any other excuse to bunk off.

When I met the wife to be she had a Marina 1300 in that sick yellow/green but that thing went everywhere and carried tons of junk, we had another two Marina's, a really nice coupe and a estate, all were 2nd hand and the estate was rubbish, but the coupe was one of the best cars (at the time) and I did have the opertunity to drive a number of car up to BMW's series 7. The Marina was easy to work on both engine and body and I did a lot of body work but in those days every car rusted for the fun of it. This review really brought back the memories and a lot of them good, thank

I did 90 in my dads 1.8. The doors were fine, though I did lose one of my L plates!

My memory of our Morris Ital was the huge rust hole in the passenger side wing arch.

Wasn't expecting this one so soon! Top work as ever, sir. :) Putting all it's problems and it's reputation to one side, I'd still like to own one someday. Yeah, I know I'm crazy lol

Fantastic video this. Very nostalgic. The car of my 70s childhood. My dad must have had a soft spot for these, we went through two of them then later on had the Ital too!

I owned a 1300 and then a 1700. Very good memories. Had the 1700 for 5years extremely reliable. The only problem with the Marina was it was in production for too long.

First car was a Marina. Bought it at the car auction for £150, it was 7 years old. I didn't want it, was told I was buying it and hated it. I wanted a Datsun I saw at the auction as my first car.

A famously collected and well presented overview as well of the BMC-projects as of all possible mistakes done in british car industry of 1960/1970

My first car also. Had saved up for a car but needed a car to go and see cars advertised. Was given one. Great car to learn. (I had passed test) I say great because you felt everything. No grip in wet. Only one wing mirror on drivers side. Taught me alot.

The Marina is, in 1983 "my car" in driving school. Is a diesel version, and you don't speak about that, 1.5 liter diesel engine! In Lisbon, in that time, 83, 84 exist a lot Marina's in taxi, also..

It was also my first car. A 1978, 200 Dutch Guilders coupe. Thanks for the story!

Excellent video. as always. At the time Of it's launch the Marina looked as good as any contemporary saloon- just overstayed it's welcome

A lovely trip down memory lane. My father had one. I seem to recall he never had any problems with the car. Excellent video, thank you 2👍⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Great video! The Marina really sums up the whole mood of the UK in the 1970s. Clear disaster on the horizon and nevertheless pressing on headlong into it! So much better than all those videos you see looking back at Britain in the past through rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.

Awesome video as always do one on the peugeot 504. They were very popular here in Kenya

To be honest, I have always liked the visual shape/look of the Marina saloon, (it's visually proportioned) but not so much the coupe. Yes, it had it's issues, but I wouldn't call it an ugly car by any means (The french were better at building those) It did have stiff competition to be fair. Another informative video from the Big Car Guy, well researched as always!

I am not ashamed to admit that I quite liked my 1.8 orange 2 door marina company car in 1972. With an 8 track stereo and Tommy The Who blaring out as I sped round the Welsh roads hanging on as I slid round the bends. Quite fond memories!!…..and I survived, so the handling could not have been so bad.

I also bought an 1800TC Marina “Super” from British car auctions Enfield in 1986 for £40. Think the bidding started at £10. Was my first car. It was a green P reg, 1976 model. But I sprayed it brown. I think what made it a “Super” was that it had a rev counter. Having just passed my test in 1985, this was the beezneez at the time and being a 1800 twin carb it beat the Cortina’s and Escort’s of the day at the traffic lights. It cruised down the motorway at 70-75 with no issues. Had the Marina for 4 years until I got a boring company car. But in those 4 years I didn’t have any issues with it. And I sold it in 1990 for £250....so made money! Not ashamed to say I owned a Morris Marina...and loved it.

I worked at Longbridge, the unions strike all the time nearly lost me my house , I was an electrician I left for a more stable job.

Thank you! We had the taupe two-door coupe. The vinyl seats were cold in the winter and too hot in the summer - thus the tartan car rug!! atb snack.

Morris Marina - the ultimate rolling spareparts box for UK veteran cars.

Had a tuned 1.8 TC in the 1980's and loved it. Would regularly go looking for E21 BMW 3series to embarrass! Needed regular maintenance but no worse than its contemporaries. Did rust though!

Who remembers when Top Gear would drop pianos on Morris Marinas?

THANK YOU, I've been requesting this for ages, great video👍🏻

I had it in my "Matchbox" car collection when I was a kid in the 1960s. A beautiful memory and a great report! Thank you! From Buenos Aires- Argentina

This is the first "Big Car" video I've watched and I'm impressed. The presenter has a particularly pleasant voice too that adds to the pleasure. I look forward to watching other videos about cars from my youth.

Really enjoyed this, you're a wealth of information. Top man

Another great informative video. Thanks Big Car.

Absolutely LOVE these videos!!

Fantastic video. Very well researched, informative and interesting. A professional job. 👏 I recall a fellow soldier had one of these back in 1986, when I was learning to drive HGV s in Leconfield. It was very fast!

We had a Marina in that lovely 70s brown colour when I was a kid. My only memories of it are us kids burning our legs on the vinyl seats on hot days and my mum writing it off by hitting a telegraph pole after skidding on black ice.

I like the Leyland "Pac-Man" gobbling up the other marques, it was very subtle.

I used to drive a company Marina van, and I'd swear it could leave anything else in a haze of dust in the rear view mirror! 😆

That advert showing them driving through the surf made my hair stand on end! My god - the corrosion!

I remember my dad coming home with a 1974 Austin Marina. "Runs like a little sewing machine", he crowed. No. No it did not. My mother was the only one who could coax it into functioning, and she swore that it came down to the way you spoke to it. That and plenty of baling wire.

This was my Dad's 2nd car which he bought from new. Stupid thing was frequently being repaired in the garage, so much that he had to rent a Vauxhall to bring my Mum and newborn sister back from hospital. It also had huge rust problems despite not being very old. By the time we got rid of it, the hole in the boot was big enough to fit a small suitcase in. Dad didn't learn, his next car was the Austin Montego..

Marina was sold in New Zealand under the NZMC with initially under a either a 1.3, or a 1.8. This was later dropped in favour of a 1.7 litre once two facelifts had reached the markets. A variation of the Marina came to market across the Tasman in Australia with a six cylinder variant with a displacement of 2600cc. Other british cars in Australia like the Cortina & Transit also got six-cylinder treatment. Those variants did make landfall in New Zealand. However, only four cylinder Marina's were ever sold / assembled from CKD kits in New Zealand 🇳🇿, lol !

I never owned one, but back in the 70s, I worked at a dealership and sold parts for them. Lots of parts, actually. From what I remember, reliability isn't a word that springs to mind.

2:13 What's a Chevy Chevelle station wagon doing a British motor show? Jokes aside, seeing Big Car upload really brightens my day during the COVID-19 lockdown. Keep up the great work, and keep em coming! :) Also to anybody who's reading this comment: Hope you're having an awesome day! :D

I owned a '68 Triumph 1300; I will say the gearbox was excellent! My brother owned an Ital estate , brilliant load lugger .

thanks for sharing

I loved my 1.3 Marina and hammered it for 100,000 miles around North Yorks & the North East. I never had an issue with the doors jamming (as suggested). I did however have to fit to two recon gearboxes (which wasn't expensive) and new rear leaf springs after carrying bags of cement in the boot :-)

I once saw a Marina take a roundabout too quickly, it spun round and round like a vinyl record.

Their roofs had an uncanny attraction to pianos.

Brilliant detail and diction.. Well done 👍👍👍

My dad had two of them, the 1.3L and 1.7 overhead cam. Both had bottom steering joint problems and reverse gear problems in the gearbox. But they were cheap to buy second hand

Thank you that was brilliant i have been waiting for you to do a BIG CAR on the dear old Marina for ages. Personally i love the Marina perhaps i just like the under dog, though as a kid in the 70s when all my other mates were into Ford i always favoured BL which was just as well as i worked for an Austin Rover Dealer when i left school back in 1982. At that point the Ital was still in production and just hanging on by its fingernails til the Maestro arrived a year latter. We did not sell many Itals though they were popular on our hire fleet probably as they were so simple to maintain. My Dad had a Marina 2 1.8 Estate back in the day and i owned 2 both 1.3 models they had quite a lot of character if not performance, but if you forgot to grease the stearing trunions regularly you were in trouble Haha. Thank You Darren. PS i own an I 10 now so realy i have the Marinas distant cousin Cool ! (:

Fascinating video. I always enjoy yours, Big Car, made very watchable as you don't have any irritating background music (other than that which is part of other inserts). Our car industry had it all and threw it away. If you've never seen it, have a look for Clarkson's Car Years where he examines BL and how it all went wrong, which does pretty much sum it all up.

I must have had one of the good ones. I remember it with great fondness , it was my first car . It was originally my dad’s, who gave it to me when i passed my test in 1989. Lime green , Reg no. WCY 811T . It never let me down. It was going strong into the early 90’s until rust finally kiiled it. 😭😭

Hello, great video! I'm in Melbourne Australia, and the Marina definitely hasn't aged well here. In the UK in the mid to late 1970's, my dad was given a Morris Marina as a work vehicle. One day, he tried to put it in reverse (from memory), and he pulled the gear stick straight out of the gear box! Apparently, his first instinct was to try and put it back where it had come from, and it worked! The Marina could have been a great car, but the 70's weren't kind to British motoring (or Australian motoring, for that matter- see the Leyland P-76!) Cheers, I really like your work. "-)

Hey, my first car was a Morris Ital 1.7HLS, black vinyl roof. I loved it, even if it did try to kill me at least 3 times. .......great video as always sir.

Cheers as always for this vid.18:40 love it, the kid circumventing the child lock.

Excellently researched & presented as always. Each newly minted episode delivers something fairly rare on UKposts these days..... Escapist enjoyment. Nice one BigCar. Keep revving it up!

My dad had a Morris Ital. We thought it was quite posh, because previously, he'd only had vans (mainly ex-GPO Vivas). We spent a week at Barry Island holiday camp (ex-Butlins) in probably 1986, then on the day we were due to drive home back to Manchester, as we drove through the camp car park over a speedhump, the front-left suspension collapsed, blocking the carpark and all the other holidaymakers trying to leave/enter. We got it towed to a garage in Barry who spent most of the day fixing it, but didn't have time to properly bleed the brakes, which was scary AF when we went over the Welsh hills with escape lanes and signs saying "Steep hill - Test your brakes NOW!" Glad to say we survived thanks to my dad furiously pumping the brake pedal at every stop.

Thanks i enjoyed that any chance of the avenger story.

Love these videos. Would love to see some videos on Opel, particularly the GT and the Ancona/Manta.

I'm English in ancestry only but I really like your videos on the history of the British car industry.

My Dad sold his Viva in the early 80's and bought a mustard Marina 1.8 saloon. He liked the power so took it for a country drive on the Berkshire Downs. I remember him describing his experience by saying "the back end was rather fond of stepping out". Sounds like fun to me now. I'd love to drive one to test that!

Great vid, you missed the 1300's good fuel consumption.Big selling point at the time.

For those who were concerned about the known understeer in the 1.8L version, just picture what we had down here in Australia. All of our locally built Marinas were fitted with E series engines. Cheapest base model with the 1500 as standard, and the more upmarket went as far as the 1750 with twin carbs. No, we weren't satisfied with that either. The little Marina was then made available with 1½ 1750 engines. Yes, the 1750 was lengthened with 2 more cylinders, resulting in a 2620cc 6 cylinder, which got crammed quite tightly into the standard length Marina bonnet. Now, do I hear somebody mentioning understeer being a problem? (I believe the same basic engine was also used in an Austin 2600? Or was that a lengthened 1500 making it the 2200? Not too familiar with British models we didn't get down here)

I truly love the style of the older cars

My brother had a Marina in Belgium, originally it was a 1800, but the engine went bad and was replaced by a 1300, handling improved and the car went on for years. Take of was slow with the 1300 but mileage was good. Rust killed off the car, but my brother still talks fondly of his Marina.

I’ve only started getting into British cars recently, it’s a really fun subject. But if I may say something (and I love quirky cars like old Citroën‘s): design-wise most of them look odd to me. Like someone drew an existing car from memory. You have unexpected curves on an angular shape, axles that look offset... strange! But fun :)

The roof isn't Piano proof

My first company car was a white two door Marina which was purchased new in 1973 having had its predelivery check. On collection it had no fuel filler cap. Was covered in flicks of grey paint and there was mud on the seats. So that was how good BMC dealers were . I collected it again one month later. After all that I really enjoyed the car and drove it for three uneventful years all over the country. It was economical. easy to drive , reasonable performance and I have only fond memories of it.

My 2nd car was a '73 1.3 Automatic bought for 70 quid in 1986 when I was 18. Had 18 months of use out of that. And my first company vehicle was an '83 Ital 1.3 van in 1987. In beige lol. Both were wholly unremarkable cars but as you said, they got you from A to B.