OT - a "Marina" question

[Tom Holder]

I've gathered that several of you are of a "finer vintage" than myself and I'm hoping that someone can help me out.

I'm looking for any information or personal experiences that you have had with Austin Marinas. My 94 year old great uncle has recently lost his licence and he has offered me his 1975 Marina 1800. It has only 37,000 miles so I am pretty excited. It's the 4 door sedan with an automatic tranny so I'm somewhat less excited than say if it were a '71 442 or such but hey, it's a interestingly obscure car it appears. The web has given me almost no help - anybody out there ever driven one? I'm not able to pick it up for almost two months - the waiting is going to kill me!!

[John Kinnane]

Tom have a look at this site.

http://www.homestead.com/austin1800/

The Austin 1800 was also made in Australia with the east-west engine, front wheel drive and hydro(something) suspension. I don't recall that they used the Marina name here.

[Bill]

A search on "Google" calls up quite a bit of info...

http://www.austinmarina.com/

b.

[Tom Holder]

I don't mean to sound ungrateful but I have pretty much scoured the web already. When I first started research on my 71 Cutlass, I was amazed at how much stuff there was out there. When I searched for Morris/Austin Marina/Ital/1800 etc., the pickings were mighty slim :cry: I guess I hoped it was a UK cult classic or something - nope.

I was kinda hoping for some personal experiences - basically what I've learned so far is it's a slow, poor handling POS but the parts are scarce

Thanks for trying.