What the Morris Marina shares with TVRs and Range Rovers | Axon’s Automotive Anorak

The item in question – a door handle – was first seen half-a-century ago when British Leyland hastily introduced its vital make-or-break medium sector family saloon range, the 1971 Morris Marina, to combat the might of the dominant Ford Cortina; the long-standing top player in the contemporary large fleet sector of the British business new car market.

Hurriedly conceived and introduced initially as a dreary four-door saloon and two-door coupe (with light commercial van and pick-up versions, plus a usefully large estate model, joining the Marina range in 1972), this important new Morris was an utterly conventional rear-wheel-drive car (in line with its chief Ford Cortina, Vauxhall Viva and Hillman Avenger opposition). Underdeveloped on a tight budget, broadly using many mechanicals and suspension components from its aged Morris Minor predecessor, that popular model having been developed during the second world war and first launched way back in 1948! 

In addition to a wide selection of body styles, the Marina was introduced with a strong choice of trim levels, equipped with a choice of BMC/Leyland’s familiar 1,275cc A-Series and 1,798cc B-Series engines, topped by the ‘sporty’ range-topping twin carburettor TC, which proved somewhat too over-powered for this 1.8 MGB motor with questionable (bordering on dangerous) on-road dynamics, strongly prone to alarming understeer on early examples.

For 1976 a revised Marina 2 ushered in a dramatically improved chassis to address the original Marina’s much-criticised wayward handling, with a welcome reworked interior and new derivatives. This was followed by a new O-Series OHC engine in 1978 for the final short-lived Marina 3 models, which made way in 1980 for the unconvincing facelift with the Marina being renamed the Ital (despite the acclaimed stylist Giugairo of ItalDesign constantly denying he had nothing to do with the model’s redesign, purely assisting with the re-engineering of the car’s reworked bodyshell).

With sometimes hair-raising handling qualities on early models, allied to shoddy build quality, (not helped by BL’s poor management, plus strike-prone, over unionised and disinterested workforce), the Marina ranked alongside the Austin Allegro in the legendary high/low point of 1970s British Leyland mediocrity, which saddled the reputation of the UK’s once most dominant vehicle manufacturing group forever more... 

Though the ill-fated Morris Marina was generally left wanting in most areas, one item of the car that successfully stood out and really stood the test of time was its oblong door handles. Reportedly designed by British Leyland’s legendary stylist Harris Mann (the author of the Allegro, wedged Princess and TR7), these oblong silver and black ‘handshake with the car’ were ably put to work on a number of other Leyland models. 

These ranged from the equally infamous Austin Allegro (plus its Innocenti Regent and Vanden Plas 1500/1.7 spin-off derivatives), through to the sporting Triumph TR7 and TR8, plus the prototype Leyland SVR 2, 3 and 4 and still-born SD2 Triumph Dolomite replacement, as well as the late-arrival four-door versions of the classic Range Rover (as originally conceived by the Swiss luxury sport car maker Monteverdi) and the first versions of the Land Rover Discovery, launched almost a decade after the last Marina was built (and more than six years after the final Austin Allegro using the same door handles was produced). The Marina handles also appeared on the Japanese-market-only Honda Crossroad, a badge-engineered version of the Discovery.

Bizarrely though, when British Leyland/Leyland Cars/Austin Rover (or whatever name the struggling vehicle maker was known as that week!) facelifted the Marina for the fourth and last time in 1980 to create the renamed Ital – its final Morris passenger car model (once the UK’s best-selling marque) – one of the odd and unnecessary changes made to the model was replacing the Marina’s distinctive rectangular door handles with some new and anonymous items (also later used on the Huandu 9105, a Chinese remake of the Morris Ital estate and van). Strange, as this remarkable small piece of British engineering quickly became the OEM parts bit darling of the UK’s celebrated specialist sportcar industry and kit car companies, being fitted to numerous sporting machines and robust off-roaders.

These included familiar and desirable British performance exotica, such as the Lotus Esprit, Elite II, Eclat and Excel, plus the revised second-generation Reliant Scimitar GTE and GTC (plus the subsequent revamped Middlebridge versions), the Ginetta G21 (and late G15s), the one-off TVR SM coupe and exciting UVA MD GTR V8-powered McLaren M6 replica. 

Other niche British low-volume cars to incorporate the oblong Marina door handles will have you reaching for your computer to Google them (some are so obscure that you might struggle to find them) or dig out your dusty old car books, encyclopaedias or magazines. From my own research, the extensive list of other vehicles using these Morris components runs to more than 75 other cars, including a wealth of UK kit cars, plus plenty of unique prototypes and dead-end dream cars, surely making these Marina’s items the most prolific car door handles of all time. At the risk of boring you, the long list includes; the 1984 Africar prototypes (with three different body styles), the AD 400/Daytona Classics Magnum 400, Alto Duo and Coupe, Avante MK I,II, Badsey Bullet, Bohanna Stables Diablo (which became the AC 3000ME), Carbodies CR6 taxi prototype, Claydon Tara 2, Eagle Milan +2, Enfield Safari, GP Centron/MDB Sapphire, GKN Sankey/Elswick Envoy invalid car, Gilbern T11 prototype, Ginetta G23 and G24, Griffon GD-XM, GTM Coupe, Interstyl Hustler (various), Kingfisher Sprint, Kingfisher Kustoms Kango, Kudos coupe, the Kiwi Magnum Spectre and Mararn coupe, Magenta TXR, Mini Marcos (some, late), MCR GT40 replica, Mutant 4x4 Pick-Up, Mystique M1 coupe, NCF Diamond (some), Nimbus coupe, Reliant FW9 coupe prototype, RW Karma, the amphibious Sea Roader, Seraph Sports Racer, Shado Sorento, Shepard SUV, Stevens Cipher, Tornado M6 GT, post-1975 Trident coupes, Whitby Warrior, the list goes on and on… 

Well, I did warn you that it’s obscure! Oh, and did I mention that the Morris Marina’s indicator stalk switchgear was also used on the Triumph Stag and eventually became part of the Lamborghini Diablo?