Now what do you think about this land crab?
Launched in 1969 the new Maxi promised to be a comfortable family car with a unique and practical body design, unfortunately the Maxi suffered from the usual Leyland build and image problems. The Maxi came with a choice of two different four cylinder, overhead cam engines a 1500cc and a 1750cc , both of which offered good levels of performance.
The Maxi body was similar in style to the old 1800 models but now included the useful addition of an opening rear hatch, the first of a whole new generation of medium sized family cars. The engine was transversely mounted and carried over the land-crab front wheel drive layout first used in the 1800 range.
The Maxi sold in steady numbers throughout its life, early 1500 versions suffered with poor gear change linkages and were dropped from the range after 1979. Production of the 1750 ended in 1981, by then 412,000 Maxi 1500/1750 models had been built.
Top Speed 0-60 Engine Pwr
86mph 16.6s 74bhp @5500
Puntiki: This car is a corpus vile of crap.... Makes the Volvo 340 below look like a Rolls Royce. I spent many a after school journey in Fat Bomb Ferons mustard Maxi, and although I was grateful for the ride, I just can't stand these horrible beasts. Only thing going for it is that it had a 5 speed manual transmission when everything else was 4 speed. That is it. I would like to apologise for posting this :-)
Pablo: Austin. A car company that is deserved resting in peace. Not only were the cars of dubious engineering (being British) but Leyland forgot to include a profit margin. Pleased to have never been in one.
10 comments:
The British motor industry could've gotten away whith cars which looked like this...if only they were better-built. There were many cars of that eara which really looked a bit odd, but proved themselves worthy of some sort of admiration -- the Renault 16 (swift, very comfy ride) and the SAAB 90/99 to name two.
Well I guess anything British in the 70's and 80's had the quality of a cheap polyester suit. And the reliability and safety features of Aeroflot at the time.
I think a lot of the car designers then were carried over for the drug fueled 60's.
Do you know anyone with one of these cars?
What, the Land Crab, or its ilk? Sorry, neither -- most have rusted themselves out of a WOF (I used to have an '81 Lancia Beta Coupe, which I sold before it started to rust, loved the car though), or the lack of parts make them impractical, especially for anyone flatting who can only afford to have one car at a time.
Anything is possible. These cars were horrible to start with, ptiy the lack of covering between the paint shop and assembly didn't cause major rust through in the first couple of years...
The UK gave the world the suspension bridge, underground transport, radar, the Spitfire, the Concorde, the Harrier, Aston Martin, Bentley, Rolls Royce and Pablo's idol - Margaret Thatcher.
The Iron lady.
anyone know where I can get my hands on one ?
Yea, I have an original lime green Maxi and it goes very well with a throaty pipe...it blows people away as there cannot be many left. Sell,not yet, I'm having too much fun! Thank you Margaret Thatcher!
Duncan Rutherford had it stored away in Nelson...Cheers..taiw@ihug.co.nz
My old man bought one brand new (1750cc) in about 1975 and still has it parked under a hedge on the farm somewhere. It was a horrible piece of shit but kept on going and going for years until he parked it up in about 1990 and bought a brand new Nissan Bluebird widetrack and that car is still going with 450kkm on the clock. The maxi went OK and I put it in the odd ditch after rugby practice a couple of times... no harm done.
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