Remembered: Britain’s V8 Aussie disaster

The peculiar story of the Leyland P76, a great might-have-been of British and Australian motoring history

Richard Bremner Autocar

by Richard Bremner

3 February 2020

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Where Britain once had colonies, it often used to make cars.

From Australia to South Africa, from Trinidad to New Zealand, the British Motor Corporation (BMC) offered cars assembled from kits to the country’s former subjects, possibly as punishment for having the cheek to seek independence.
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BMC’s empire

BMC’s down-under operations were once extensive, and the company was successful enough to develop models specifically for Australia, though the results sometimes had you wondering how it conducted its market research.

Gruesome mutations called Morris Major (pictured) and Austin Lancer were bizarre late 1950s elongations of the Wolseley 1500 (all the stretching was outside the wheelbase, to create a bigger car that remained small).
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Nomad

These were followed by the Nomad (pictured), a Morris 1100 hatchback mutant whose appalling Maxi gearbox ensured that it did not travel well, and 1970’s Kimberley and Tasman, a pair of squared-off Austin 1800s whose quality was dire enough to force Mk2s to be rushed out in record time.

By now BMC had become British Leyland (BL), and its reputation had received a serious shredding from these ill-considered and often poorly made machines, which suffered for being adapted from fundamentally unsuitable UK models.
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New world

The answer, reckoned BMC, was to design a completely new car to suit Australian needs, and that meant a big, mechanically simple rear-drive saloon in much the same mould as the Holden Kingswoods, Ford Fairmonts and Chrysler Valiants that Aussies bought by the transporter load.

They were tough, easy to repair and came with straight sixes or V8s and very often a bench front seat. So the Leyland P76 was born.
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The recipe

The 1973 P76 offered all these things and a trendy wedge-shaped body to go with it, penned by Leyland Australia’s in-house stylist, Romand Rodburgh with input from the ubiquitous Giovanni Michelotti.

It came with a choice of a 2.6-litre straight six (an enlarged version of the Austin-Morris’s transverse 2200 motor) or a 4.4-litre V8 grown from Rover’s ex-Buick 3500 engine.
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Design

It looked a little odd in the nose and tail zones, with enormous overhangs and a boot big enough to house a 44-gallon oil drum – just the thing for an industrious day on the sheep farm. It also came with a series of punning paint names that included Hairy Lime, Am Eye Blue, Peel Me A Grape, Home On Th’ Orange and Oh Fudge.

The entertainment continued on the road, because the P76 turned out to handle pretty well, felt robust and was reckoned by the Aussie press to stack up well against the opposition. Australia’s Wheels magazine even made it its Car of the Year for 1973.
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Doom

And then it all went BL. Strikes, component shortages, a not-quite-finished development programme and stories of industrial sabotage all undermined the P76; BL’s rivals were reckoned to have pressured suppliers into stalling parts deliveries, fearing the possibility that Leyland Australia might actually have produced a decent car.

So by October 1974, just 16 months after the P76 was launched, this promising car was killed along with the Sydney plant that made it, as much a victim of parent company BL’s accelerating domestic troubles as it was local difficulties. Around 18,000 P76s were built, and nearly all sold in Australia, though it was evaluated for European sale too.
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Coupé

The car’s premature end also killed off the P76’s would-be siblings. These include a not-uninteresting coupé dubbed P76 Force Seven (pictured), of which 10 are thought to exist: a mash-up of Italian, American and British design themes.
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Wagon

Even rarer is the P76 estate, which might have looked perfect while cruising the outback. Just one of these was built (pictured).
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Today

Today, the P76 has something of a cult following in Australia, with a thriving owners club in New South Wales that meets monthly in the western suburbs of Sydney. A P76 even triumphed in the classics category of the Peking to Paris rally in 2013, the 40th anniversary of the car, beating a 1965 Porsche 911 in the process (pictured).
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Lost victory

Australia’s days of being a car producer are now behind it, GM, Ford and Toyota having now all closed their factories in the country, a victim among other things of a strong currency that made exports pricey and imports cheap.

The failed P76 project was the last sorry chapter in BL’s attempts to remain a major player in Australia and a wider multinational; the car remains one of the more interesting might-have-beens that litter the history of Britain’s very own might-have-been General Motors.

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