The Morris Ital was a medium-sized sedan car built by British Leyland British Leyland was a vehicle manufacturing company formed in the United Kingdom in 1968 as British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd . It was partly nationalised in 1975 with the government creating a new holding company called British Leyland Ltd which became BL Ltd (later BL plc) in 1978. It incorporated much of the British owned motor vehicle (BL) from 1980 until 1984.
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Design and launch
The Ital was first launched on 1 July 1980. It took its name from Giorgetto Giugiaro's ItalDesign studio, who had been employed by BL to manage the re-engineering of Morris Marina The Morris Marina is a car manufactured by the Morris division of British Leyland in the UK throughout the 1970s, which was a period of great turbulence and difficulty for the British car industry. It was known in some markets as the Austin Marina, Leyland Marina, and Morris 1.7, a car which had been produced by the company since 1971. Although the redesigned car was named Ital after the design studio, it was actually Harris Mann who was responsible for the car's new look. BL's advertising, however, emphasised the car's connection with the Italian styling house Italdesign, who had in fact merely productionised the design.[1]
The Ital had revised exterior styling, but retained the Marina's 1.3- and 1.7-litre petrol engines A petrol engine is an internal combustion engine with spark-ignition, designed to run on petrol (gasoline) and similar volatile fuels and rear wheel drive In automotive design the automobile layout describes where on the vehicle the engine and drive wheels are found. Many different combinations of engine location and driven wheels are found in practice, and the location of each is dependent on the application the vehicle will be used for. Factors influencing the design choice include cost, chassis A chassis (pronounced /ˈʃæsi, ˈtʃæsi/) consists of an internal framework that supports a man-made object. It is analogous to an animal's skeleton. An example of a chassis is the under part of a motor vehicle, consisting of the frame (on which the body is mounted) with the wheels and machinery. The dashboard A dashboard is a control panel placed in front of the driver of an automobile, housing instrumentation and controls for operation of the vehicle and interior of the Marina were also carried over largely unaltered. The Marina's coupé A coupé or coupe is a closed car body style, the precise definition of which varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, and over time. Coupés are often hardtopped sports cars or sporty variants of sedan (saloon) body styles, with doors commonly reduced from 4 to 2, and a close-coupled interior (i.e., the rear seat placed further forward than in a variant was not produced in Ital form, but the four-door saloon A sedan car or saloon car (British English) is a passenger car with two rows of seats and adequate passenger space in the rear compartment for adult passengers. The vehicle usually has a separate rear trunk (boot in British English) for luggage, although some manufacturers such as Chevrolet, Tatra, and Volkswagen have made rear-engined models. It, five-door estate A station wagon is a passenger car body style similar in terms of passengers to the sedan/saloon style but incorporating a full-size back cargo compartment accessible via a fifth door instead of the standard sedan trunk slot. Station wagons are not to be confused with hatchbacks, whose difference lies in the size of the said compartment, with and pick-up A pickup truck is a light motor vehicle with an open-top rear cargo area (bed) which is almost always separated from the cab to allow for chassis flex when carrying or pulling heavy loads.[citation needed] and van A van is a kind of vehicle used for transporting goods or groups of people. It is usually a box-shaped vehicle on four wheels, about the same width and length as a large automobile, but taller and usually higher off the ground, also referred to as a light commercial vehicle or LCV. However, in North America, the term may be used to refer to any versions were carried over from the Marina range. From 1981, an automatic version of the Ital was available with the 2.0-litre O-Series power unit.
Portuguese assembly
Although most Itals were manufactured in the UK, there were also Portuguese Portugal /ˈpɔɹtʃʉɡəl/ (Portuguese: Portugal, Mirandese: Pertual), officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa; Mirandese: República Pertuesa), is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and-assembled Itals (badged as Marina The Morris Marina is a car manufactured by the Morris division of British Leyland in the UK throughout the 1970s, which was a period of great turbulence and difficulty for the British car industry. It was known in some markets as the Austin Marina, Leyland Marina, and Morris 1.7 1.5 D) which were all equipped with the ancient 1.5-litre B-Series The BMC B-series was a straight-4 internal combustion engine family, mostly used in motor cars, created by British company Austin Motor Company. The pre-cursor of the "B" series engine was a 1200cc OHV engine which was used in the 1947 Austin A40 Devon. This A40 Devon engine was based on a pre-war Side-valve design. Austin realised that diesel engine, producing 37 hp.[2] The British Leyland factory in Setúbal Setúbal is the main city in Setúbal Municipality in Portugal with a total area of 172.0 km² and a total population of 118,696 inhabitants in the municipality. The city proper has 89,303 inhabitants (IMA) then switched to producing the Mini Moke The Mini Moke is a vehicle based on the Mini and designed for the British Motor Corporation by Sir Alec Issigonis. The name comes from "Mini"—the car with which the Moke shares many parts—and "Moke", which is an archaic dialect term for donkey.
Sales
The Ital sold reasonably well in Britain during the early 1980s, as it offered a competitive asking price and low running costs. The Ital's technology differed from many of its contemporaries, such as the Opel Ascona/Vauxhall Cavalier, as well as the Peugeot 505 and Talbot Alpine, which were different in that they had front wheel drive Front-wheel drive is a form of engine/transmission layout used in motor vehicles, where the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel drive vehicles feature a transverse engine, rather than the conventional longitudinal engine arrangement generally found in rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive vehicles. After the introduction of the Opel Ascona C / Vauxhall Cavalier Mark II in August 1981, the Ital and Ford's Cortina The Cortina was Ford's mass-market mid-sized car and sold extremely well, making it very common on British roads. It was also Britain's best-selling car of the 1970s. It was eventually replaced in 1982 by the Ford Sierra. In other markets, particularly Asia and Australasia, it was replaced by the Mazda 626-based Ford Telstar, though Ford New (and later Sierra The Ford Sierra is a large family car built by Ford Europe from 1982 until 1993. It was designed by Uwe Bahnsen, Robert Lutz and Patrick le Quément. The code used during development was "Project Toni") were the only mass-volume cars in the sector to maintain rear-wheel drive.
The end of Morris
The Ital was the last production car to wear the Morris The Morris Motor Company was a British car manufacturing company. After the incorporation of the company into larger corporations, the Morris name remained in use as a marque until 1984 when British Leyland's Austin Rover Group decided to concentrate on the more popular Austin marque badge (although there was a Morris-badged van version of the Metro which was produced until 1984). Production of the Ital was swapped from Cowley Cowley in Oxford, England, is a residential and industrial area that forms a small conurbation within greater Oxford. It has a population of about 16,500 people. Cowley's neighbours are central Oxford to the northwest, Rose Hill and Blackbird Leys to the south, New Headington to the north and the villages of Horspath and Garsington across fields to Longbridge The Longbridge plant is an industrial site situated in the Longbridge area of Birmingham, England. Opened in 1905, Longbridge was once the largest manufacturing plant in the world. During the 20th Century the site employed many thousands of people, central to the economy of the local area. Longbridge has produced a wide variety of products, in September 1982 to allow the Cowley plant to be upgraded for production of the forthcoming Austin Montego and Austin Maestro. At this time, the Ital received an upgrade with different front and rear suspension (parabolic rear springs and telescopic front dampers) and models were redesignated SL and SLX. The saloon was dropped from the line in February 1984 with the van and estate completing outgoing contracts for another six months, until they too were axed. From this point, the Morris marque A marque is a brand name, especially in the automobile industry. For example, Chevrolet and Buick are marques of their maker, General Motors (GM). A company may have many marques; GM has used more than a dozen in the North American market alone was kept alive solely by the Metro van, and by the end of the decade the Morris marque had been completely discontinued along with the Austin The Austin Motor Company was a British manufacturer of automobiles. The trademark is currently owned by Nanjing Automitive marque, as the Rover brand monopolised the range of hatchback and saloons.
The Ital's successor was the Austin Montego, launched in April 1984 as a four-door saloon, with a five-door estate arriving in January 1985.
Later production in China
After UK production ceased, the Ital's production tooling was sold to the Chengdu More than four thousand years ago, the prehistorical Bronze Age culture of Jinsha (Chinese: 金 Auto Works, a company belonging to the First Auto Works Group in Sichuan province Sichuan (Chinese: 四川; pinyin: Sìchuān; Postal map spelling: Szechwan and Szechuan) is a province (shěng) in Southwestern China with its capital in Chengdu. The current name of the province, 四川 (Sìchuān), is an abbreviation of 四川路 (Sì Chuānlù), or "Four circuits of rivers", which is itself abbreviated from 川峡四, China. In 1998, the Ital estate (utilising a locally-made chassis) reappeared there, under the name Huandu CAC6430. Van and pick-up variants were also produced. Chengdu Auto Works is thought to have closed down in May 1999.[3]
Reputation
Already outdated by the time it was launched, and continually saddled with build quality problems, the Ital soon gained a very bad reputation. In July 2008, it ended up second in a poll of "the worst British car ever" conducted by The Sun The Sun is a daily tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and Ireland with the highest circulation of any daily English-language newspaper in the world , standing at an average of 2,972,763 copies a day in February 2010. A separate Scottish Sun is published and printed in Glasgow with a circulation of about 350,000 copies daily (,[4] ending narrowly behind the Austin Allegro The Austin Allegro is a small family car that was manufactured by British Leyland under the Austin name from 1973 until 1983. The same vehicle was built in Italy by Innocenti in 1974 and 1975 and sold as the Innocenti Regent. In total, 642,350 Austin Allegros were produced during its ten year production life, with the majority being sold on the. The Ital was said to have similar rust problems to its predecessor, the Morris Marina The Morris Marina is a car manufactured by the Morris division of British Leyland in the UK throughout the 1970s, which was a period of great turbulence and difficulty for the British car industry. It was known in some markets as the Austin Marina, Leyland Marina, and Morris 1.7, and because of this surviving Itals are rare today, although the Morris Marina Owners Club and Morris Ital Register is making sure the few remaining examples survive.
References
- ^ Marina/Ital Development Story, AROnline
- ^ Marina-Based Models, AROnline
- ^ Huandu CAC6430, AROnline
- ^ "Austin’s Allegro ‘worst car ever’ | The Sun |Motors". The Sun. 2008-07-17. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/motors/article1432281.ece. Retrieved 2009-08-08.
