1988 Rover - Austin Maestro L from UK and Ireland - Comments

Exhaust blown.

Small patch of welding needed for the MOT.

Amazing little machine, cost me just £100 to buy, with no trouble since I bought it.

It needed just £60 to go through the MOT meaning I had bought a car for £160 for 1.5 years running.

Great value for money with huge amounts of practicality, loads of space within sitting 5 adults comfortably.

Performance is great coming from the acclaimed A-series 1275 cc engine from the Mini, only needs a fifth gear for better motorway cruising. Although ride is still very smooth at 70 mph.

A lot better than a Fiesta!!!!!!!!

I bought one of these (used) for 700 quid and it ran for 6 years. ugly as hell, but great engine.

A fifth gear seemed like a good idea to me too, when I had my E-reg Maestro. After it was written off by a welder's van, however, I got the F-reg with sunroof and a 5-speed box... and it's surprisingly sluggish. I am about to give the alternator some attention in the hope that this will fix the problem, but all the gears seem to be taller in the F-reg car. You would expect 4th to be higher in a 4-speed box than in a 5-speed, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I realise that Austin bought the gearboxes from VW, rather than producing their own, so maybe the odd gear ratios are indicative of something that happened in the Golf rather than the Maestro.

PS. The welder's van was written off too.

The 5 speed gearbox linkage is particularly vague and unreliable too. When it broke I managed to stick it in 3rd and drove it 20 miles in the one gear, five up. Strange beast, the Maestro L, but I look back on it with fondness, not so the SIERRA Ghia 3 speed auto, I was running at the same time. Probably because although it was rubbish, a hammer and a set of molegrips were all you needed to get you home. Oh dear, I've just remembered that bleeding awful engine management system.

I've owned a Maestro and two Fiestas, and unless accommodation is your top priority I really can't see how the Maestro could be considered superior.

The A series versions were also desperately underpowered by anyone's standards.