Maxi Satisfaction
Sir
Some time ago in April 1972 you were kind enough to publish my enthusiastic ravings bout the Austin Maxi. May I now rave on a bit more?
At that time it had completed 20,000 Witt in 10 months and nothing had dropped off. This happy state of affairs continued to 56,000 miles in just over two years total. Al that point it was due for renewal (company car). So I bought it for our own use and, thinking that 1½ Maxis could well be better than one, replaced it with an Austin 2200.
What a super car. It covered 20,000 miles s (it’s habit-forming this driving business) and still nothing dopped off. Top speed of over 100 m.p.h., vast amounts of room, power brakes, all round and the fantastic f.w.d. cars have.
At that time I changed jobs and also cars and so what have we now? The best so far a Morris 2200 (badge engineering for ever) but with automatic box and power steering. I didn’t think I was old enough for automatic but the manual box on these cars does take a little tolerance and with auto and f.w.d the “crab” will get up and go very well indeed, especially at the traffic lights grand prix. Power steering, of course, just spoils you and this one retains good feel and castor action.
With the automatic box it is still possible to “play Minis” with the 2200 and in the wet make anything else look very sick and unstable.
I don’t know what plans BL have for the “land crab”, dated in appearance as it is, but in my book it is the bargain of the year.
And still nothing drops off. This phrase refers to all the British cars I have owned. I average 2,000 miles per month and have done for more than 10 years. I have only had one import and that was so expensive in repairs, it just wasn’t for me. So why, why, why do we see this continual importation of foreign rubbish. Don’t get me wrong, there are some very gorgeous and/or hairy and/or desirable imports, but for run-of-the-mill tin boxes their rubbish is a lot worse than ours—and a lot more expensive to maintain.
For a country geared economically to the great god motor car we cannot afford to lose home sales needlessly. You sounded a cautious but patriotic note a month or two ago. Perhaps you should again so that people look twice at the enormous array on our own shelves before trying some of the tin boxes with the foreign names over the road.
Weybridge J. E. Webb-Jenkins