Austin Maestro - the 80s rare British classic car you can drive daily!

The Austin Maestro

Once commonplace in the UK, the Austin Maestro is a really rare spot and one which is deeply appreciated by classic car spotters - especially the younger contingency who attend events like Festival of the Unexceptional and have a found a new joy in the 80s and 90s motoring many of us took for granted the first time around!

The car originally came to market to replace some of the ageing models in the range including the Allegro, Maxi and Ital. The car which came to market in March 1983 came in hot on the heels of the Metro - which taken the supermini space in the range.

If you look at early press releases, they dub the car ’The miracle Maestro’ which might seem ambitious or slightly over the top, but the Metro had been launched with the strapline ’the British car to beat the world’...

And after all, the Metro had been a success and the Maestro was to fill that mid space with the same level of success for families, fleet buyers and commercial buyers such as the police and initially it did well; even impressing the jaded car journalists who loved to be a little depreciative of the cars coming out of British factories.

Just as I do today, reviewers thought it drove well, had decent amounts of room inside and offered both driver and passengers a great deal of comfort.

In a press release dubbed ’The Maestro Express’, Austin Rover said that in a little over six months of initial sales, the car sold 45,000 units - which exceeded the figures they’d initally forecast for the car. This boom was fuelled by fleet car buyers who appreciated the promise of low cost ownership: a promised reliabiity, inexpensive routine servicing and unbeatable fuel economy in its class.

Pricing wise against the cars AR saw as competitiors, the 1.6 Maestro as we’re testing here today was priced from £5,499 with the Escort coming in at £5,507 and the Astra price matched at £5,499. These prices were as stated for September 19 83

Interestingly, a major leasing company called Interleasing UK also released a survey the same year and compared running costs of the compact cars sector and found the Maestro 1.6 - the HLS - came in cheaper on annual running costs than the competitors. The Maestro came in at £3,341 per annum against the Escort 1.6GL at £3,351 and the Astra 1.6GL at £3,445. These figures were based on an annual mileage of 18,000 and various additional factors including depreciation, fleet admin charges and road fund tax.

All this is well and good, but what did buyers actually to have to choose from?

Well, at launch the CAD tech designed car offered engine options - with the humble 1.3 coming in at the bottom of the range and the 1.6 as we’re testing here, the R series, being the bigger engine option. If the R series is new to you as it was to me, it’s essentially a reworked version of the E series which had been used in the maxi and Allegro. You’ve probably not had much experience of it because unlike many other BMCBL and AR engines which seem to go on forever, this was only used for a few years until it was replaced by the S series.

Both the 1.3 and 1.6 were fitted with an electronic engine management system and aside from the very cheapest example, all had the split back seat to accomodate additional luggage. Later on you get the 2 litre perkins diesel and the 2 litre turbo.

There were some big hits on this car which were very highly regarded at the time included the laminated screen and in some models the talking voice synthesiser and the digital dash.

They continued on valiantly throughout the 1980s, with sales slowly dwindling away from the car being in Britains top 10 best sellers in the early few years of production to dropping off in the late 80s. Some of this was down to competition in the market and some was down to the early cars with R series engines having problems which buyers, especially those early fleet buyers, didn’t forget.

That’s not to say however that Austin Rover rested on their laurels with the car, they didn’t. They continously improved it, added to the range and addressed problems and buyer complaints to try and give people what they wanted.

The range comes to a close in the UK in 1994 whereby fewer than 5,000 cars are produced in one year - a sad for a car which came to market with such promise.
However, that’s not where the story ends, because of course in 1995 they start being built in Bulgaria and around 2,000 cars were made. It would've and should’ve been more, but the Bulgarian government didn’t honour an original deal and import duties made the car more expensive than it should’ve been; giving diminished demand. some of these cars did however made it back to the UK and they’re fondly known as Ledbury Maestros - with the last of these cars being registered in 20 01