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Was the avant-garde Princess ahead of its time?



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The Princess has got a bad reputation. By the time it featured as Terry Scott’s suburban car in the ever-so middle-class, middle-of-the-road “Terry and June”, it was seen as just another unreliable mistake from British Leyland. But the Princess was front wheel drive – something large family cars flocked to in the 1980s after the Vauxhall Cavalier showed it was the way to go. It had a forward-thinking design, turning its back on boring three box shapes like the Ford Cortina that launched just a year later. And it focused on a low drag shape, just like Citroen, to get the most power and fuel efficiency from the engine.
But being produced by British Leyland in the 1970s, becoming successful was beyond even this car’s reach, and almost as soon as it had launched it was forgotten, and Ford’s boxy Cortina went on to rule the roost. So just what went wrong?

Music (from the YouTube audio library):
* The Basement Strut - The Whole Other
* So Smooth - Danny Kean, Doug Maxwell

Optional Extra video about the Princess: https://youtu.be/U-yUOnNExfs

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Sources:
https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/bmc/1800-2200/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrolastic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMC_ADO17
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMC_B-series_engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Haynes_(designer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris_Mann
https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/austin-morris/princess/
https://www.city-journal.org/html/government-motors-1975-13228.html
https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Business_economics/Nationalisation.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nationalizations_by_country#United_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Princess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMC_E-series_engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BL_O-series_engine
http://www.leylandprincess.co.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrolastic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_SD1

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