page_title: Austin Maxi
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Austin Maxi / History
caption_attribution_description: English: British Leyland Motor Corporation Austin Maxi Mk I of 1970 and Austin Maxi Mk II of 1970 (1750) showing differences .
context_page_description: The Austin Maxi is a medium-sized 5-door hatchback small family car that was produced by Austin and later British Leyland between 1969 and 1981. It was the first British five-door hatchback.
  British Leyland built and sold the Maxi alongside the 1971 Morris Marina and 1973 Austin Allegro. All three were replaced by the 1982 Austin Maestro.
context_section_description: The Maxi (code name ADO14) was the last car designed under the British Motor Corporation (BMC) before it was incorporated into the new British Leyland group, and was the last production car designed by famed designer Alec Issigonis. Originally under BMC's plan for its new model range, which it had been developing since 1965, the Maxi was to have been called the "Austin 1500" on its spring 1969 launch, and a saloon version the "Morris 1500" was to follow in the autumn.
  However, upon the merger of BMC and Leyland the new management abandoned the four-door saloon notchback and developed the Morris Marina instead. The Marina, launched in April 1971, was a rear-wheel drive car available as a saloon, coupe or estate.
  The new chairman Lord Stokes decided to also change the hatchback's name to the Maxi in homage to the Mini of 10 years earlier. All Maxis were produced at the Cowley plant in Oxford, although the E-Series engines were made at a brand new factory at Cofton Hackett in Longbridge.
  The Maxi was launched in Oporto, Portugal, on 24 April 1969, in a blaze of publicity; it was one of the first cars to appear on the BBC's new car programme Wheelbase, a forerunner to Top Gear (which debuted in 1977). It was also the first car to be launched after the creation of British Leyland. It was one of the first hatchback models to be produced in the world, and the very first in Britain; the five-door hatchback echoed the French-produced Renault 16, which was European Car of the Year following its launch in 1965. This type of car increased in popularity rapidly during the 1970s and during the 1980s became the most popular type of car in most European markets.
  Underneath the Maxi's practical and spacious bodyshell lay an all-new Front-wheel drive chassis, which was interlinked with an innovative five-speed manual transmission, another rarity on family cars in 1969 and one which many manufacturers did not largely adopt until more than a decade later. The transmission suffered from notorious problems with its control linkage, especially in early models which had a cable-operated linkage prone to cable stretch and other problems. These were noted by autotesters such as Vicar in Today's Driver (1969), who wrote: "This is probably a good idea that just needs a little bit of working on." This criticism actually came as a result of a road test two months before the car officially went on sale. The later rod linkage was less problematic. All models were prone to problems brought on by the "cogs in the sump" layout, whereby the gearbox and engine shared a common oil supply. The clutch oil seal was also prone to leakage.
  Power came from a 1,485 cc (90.6 cu in), E-Series petrol engine which would later be used in other British Leyland products, such as the Austin Allegro. The 1750 and twin-carburettor 1750 HL models, added to the range in 1971, offered good performance by the standards of this era, with a top speed of 97 mph, while the smaller-engine version could exceed 90 mph.
  Despite the new platform, the Maxi's styling suffered from the decision to save tooling costs by using door panels from the Austin 1800 "Landcrab", which gave the Maxi an unusually long wheelbase in relation to its length, coupled with the fact that the carryover doors made the Maxi resemble a scaled down version of the 1800 (and indeed, the Austin 3-Litre, which also used the same doors). This design was, by then, five-years-old, at a time when curvaceous American-inspired  "coke bottle" styling (typified by contemporaries such as the Ford Cortina Mk III and Hillman Avenger) was very much in vogue, contrasting sharply with the Maxi's very obvious mid-1960s looks. Another styling ambition for the car was a four-door saloon version, to compete directly with the Ford Cortina. A prototype was built, badged as a Morris, but it was not put into production, since the booted extension made the Maxi almost the same size as the 1800 model, which itself was replaced in March 1975 by the 18-22 series models (renamed the Princess just months after its launch).
  In Australia, owing to
caption: Austin Maxi MkI (left) and MkII (right)
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