Mike Humble:

“It was just a crying shame the styling was about as modern as a Hotpoint Twintub”

When you close your eyes and think of the quintessential `80s ‘Hot Hatch’ what comes to mind? I’ll bet you my last Rolo it will be such ilk as the Astra GTE, Golf GTi perhaps if you think outside the box – the Lancia Delta HF. Well I have been slumbering and pondering over one of the forgotten and sadly laughed at hot hatches – the MG Maestro.

Ok I will admit (partly from first hand experience) that the early 1.6 ‘R’ series example introduced in 1983 was hillariously crap, though the blink and you’ll miss it ‘S’ series version was slightly better thanks to an engine that was a bit more free revving. Late in `84, the fuel injected Austin Rover ‘O’ series unit was dropped into the spacious engine bay, and armed with fuel injection, threw the gauntlet down in front of the XR3i and others. With 115bhp and oodles of low to mid range thrutch, you were treated to a sprint to a mile a minute in just 8.5 seconds. Despite the hike in power and performance, fuel economy was pretty thrifty too, getting close to 50mpg at the old 56mph test. The new Honda designed but Austin built gearbox, the PG1-T5 had a beautiful change quality – so long as the selector universal joint or rod roll pin hadn’t worn out.

Lashings of useable performance maybe, but to get the best out of long stroke ‘O’ series unit, you were better off driving it on the torque rather than outright power and speed. You see, the ‘O’ series was the polar opposite of units from Japan – especially Honda. It had a longish stroke and didn’t even have a cross flow cylinder head which really hampered its ability to breath at the upper echelons of the rev range. Whereby a Honda ‘D’ series laughed and sang away at 6000rpm plus, the poor old MG unit was pretty much out of puff at 5500 – any much more than this and you’d be calling the AA and sweeping your crankcase off the carriageway with a dustpan and brush.

My own example had a trait that still impresses me to this today. You could slow down in 5th gear to idle speed (approx 15mph) – enough to make the gearbox internals and driveshafts rattle like broken crockery. Stamp on the volume pedal and after some initial really loud and gutoral induction roar from the canister type air cleaner and the bugger would pull from its boots – right up to an indicated 130mph – in just one gear! Oh that induction noise… I can hear it in my mind now. In fact, the whole driveline made some wonderful mechanical noises – that faint melodic whine in 3rd gear, that Maxi-esque whooping noise from the fan of the Lucas A127 alternator at high revs – oh those happy halcyon memories.

“I remember racing from one side of Milton Keynes to Bletchley late one night with a pal in his Golf only to get to the fourth or fifth roundabout just as the middle pedal almost got perilously close to the famous MG red carpet – it wasn’t the only thing that was nearly touching cloth”

Of course, it wasn’t all plain sailing. Despite having ventilated front discs, the diameter of them was still the same as a 1300 base model and the rear shoes had less surface area of material than a Sturmey Archer pedal back brake on a pushbike. I remember racing from one side of Milton Keynes to Bletchley late one night with a pal in his Golf only to get to the fourth or fifth roundabout just as the middle pedal almost got perilously close to the famous MG red carpet – it wasn’t the only thing that was nearly touching cloth. That said, you could change the pads, if you got a wriggle on… both sides, in under half an hour using nothing more than a stout flat bladed screwdriver and a 13mm spanner. All in all they were laughably easy to fix and / or repair.

The handling and ride of them was really good. Whereby an equivalent Astra or Escort smashed and jolted over the potholes with all the comfort of being thrown down a fire escape, the MG Maestro had a nice but firm ride and decent road holding – despite having a lofty bodyshell and long travel suspension. Even more impressive when you consider the torsional rigidity of the bodyshell was comparable to that of wet cardboard. I knew of one owner who had a recent screen replacement only for the new one to crack from a bottom corner after taking off from a raised mini roundabout on just his offside wheels as the whole body frame twisted (or beamed) as engineers would say.

I have often said that if the Maestro or Montego had much better torsional strength the handling would eclipse a Caterham. Those folk at Austin Rover sure as hell knew how to make something out of nothing when it came to suspension and steering engineering. Another Maestro trait that makes me wince to this day was the really worrying trick of refusing to let you open a front door if you used a trolley jack on the lifting points when changing a wheel for example. Or, if the door was already open when jacked up on one corner, the top rear leading edge of the door frame would collide with the `B’ pillar and knock a bloody great gouge in it with a loud and eye watering BANG noise – how did they get away with it?

But… they had a stupidly HUGE amount of passenger space, a truly massive boot, hugging faux Recaro front seats, went like the clappers and were really REALLY comfortable. The driving position was nigh on superb, I adored those nifty fibre optic illuminated column stalks, innovative height adjustable seat belts and more warning lights and LED’s on the dashboard than the flightdeck of Concorde. It was just a crying shame the styling was about as modern as a Hotpoint Twintub and the sheet metal could dissolve faster than a junior disprin – and usually did!

They had their faults but I dearly loved them… and still do!

What say you? Comment below…