The bodywork was never perfect, there were lots of Rust spots on the body and most of them looked pretty scrabby. There was Rust hole on left front fender.
Standard Phillips cassette/radio jammed cassettes. So I replaced for a futuristic Sony CD-Player.
The Battery gone flat several times.
Clutch started to slip at 180.000. Clutch replaced twice due the same problem. Second time it happened at 184.000.
Forget the dealers. Specially if own one of these cars. The Rover dealer service is appalling for people that owns Old Rovers.
The same advice, worth if you own a Montego or a Metro.
Bought as a replacement for a 1989 Volkswagen Polo Fox 1.0 Hatchback 3-Door.
This car is just Better than walk or take a Bus, otherwise forget it.
Let's starting to talk about its Achilles Heel:
The bodywork rusted away quickly so it had to go to the scrapyard. The car was white, so you must have an idea how gorgeous it was with the rust spots and holes...
The Maestro had a 2.0 Diesel engine litre engine, so performance was nothing special, but the fuel economy was fine. 43 Mpg around the town and 55 Mpg on the motorway.
The car handled poor. There was huge tendency to understeer and the body rolled too much at the hard corners. The steering wheel was heavy at low speeds. But when in high speeds the Steering became light and there was no feel whatsoever.
The front seats were comfortable, but there was little room in the back. Also the boot was quite small.
I finally got rid of the Maestro in September 2003 for £55. It went to a 17-year-old A-level student. I bought a 95N Vauxhall Corsa LS 1.2 Hatchback 5-Door with 60,000 miles for £900.
The Vauxhall It's still going strong.
I Had one too and believe me, they truly are crap!
I Also was an Owner of a 1992 Maestro Clubman D.
And I agree with the reviewer and the other commenter.
That was a Horrible Car!
Lots of Problems and the car itself, wasn't good either.
I think this car is rubbish and I'm glad 'Austin' stopped making them in 94 because eventually they will all explode and cause worldwide destruction.
Search for New and Used Rover - Austin Maestros available in the UK
Click here to advertise your car
By 1992 the Maestro was owned by Rover Group.
And yes, the 1.3L Clubman petrol was also a terrible car.
For a start: 4 speeds were being discontinued left right and centre, by the time we got our (at the time 6 year old) Maestro in 1998 the car was only worth £200 FROM a Rover dealer, who actually warned us against it... and as times were truly tight (and a few years back having owned a very reliable Austin Maestro), we couldn't afford anything else and had no time to look (besides we only needed it for a few months)!
Turns out it (just about) lasted a year; it was nippy, but burned oil, blue smoke spewed out the back of it within months and the cabin smelt faintly of petrol. It only had 35,000 on the clock when we got it and a full service history which confirmed this!
The whole car was just terribly built! Springy gearbox, that horrible push down to reverse thing only worked the 4th time you tried to reverse.
Truly an awful car. We replaced it with an even older 1982 and £50 MAZDA 323 1.3, which had 5 gears and lasted 3 years longer than the Maestro!
The old Austin Maestro in 1992 was 9 years old when we got it and it lasted till 1995 when we sold it on!
I don't know what happened to them when Rover took over for them to die like that after just 6 years and 35K mileage, but well... Truly TRULY awful car!
Note: A Comments RSS Feed is available. New comments appear in the Members Area before the main site