montegos?????

[trg1984]

why do montego's get over looked on the retro scene, i think they have bags of potential. if i had spare cash id bag myself one. make it into a lowrider

[reanimation]

Same reason a lot of other bigger than an Escort, FWD modern retro stuff gets forgotten and ignored, some Marina and Mini nuts are adopting them a bit now, along with retro loons like 'Street', and 'Hairnet 600'?

Would prefer a Maestro like myself, loved em ever since one talked to me in 1985 or 1986!

Do it, grab a retro bargain!

[qwerty]

I think its because they're fwd and have the hydro e spastic suspension that they never really caught on.

[DarrenW]

Early pre-facelift ones have all but disappeared now! They've all gone! I really can't remember the last time I saw one...

[reanimation]

I have not seen one of these for ages either? one of these could respond to some treatment, my mates dad had one while i was at uni, V nice car i thought, what was up with em, Honda arn't they? sorry just thought i'd throw it into the pot....

[Imperial]

qwerty said:

I think its because they have the hydro e spastic suspension that they never really caught on.

have they?

[qwerty]

Yeah I think so

[Nathan]

I dint know they had the spastic suspension, everyday is defo a school day.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

You think wrongly then! Steel springs on montys and maestros.

[arthurbrown]

darrenw said:

Early pre-facelift ones have all but disappeared now! They've all gone! I really can't remember the last time I saw one...

WOW! ANTI-STANCE!!!!

I think they have failed to catch on because not only have most of them rotted away, but because they were impossibly CRUD from new. Whereas an 80's Cavalier or Sierra would soldier on with only scant servicing, my abiding memory of these is that they need frequent trips back to the garage for silly things.

Both my dad and my grandad bought Montego's brand new, and both were plagued with reliability issues from day 1.

[qwerty]

Oh i apologise i have been misguided thanks for corecting me.
They have suddenly risen in my estimation

[qwerty]

I really want one now lol

[trg1984]

my dad had one and it was the best car we've ever had for reliability, its was an auto and he serviced it all the time kept on top of the auto oil etc, it was a beaut, i remember getting upset when i came home from school and it had been replaced by a rover 800 (puke!)

i was very sentimental as a kid haha

[mitch]

I'd rather have one than a Sierra, purely cos i prefer the styling and dashboard. I bought a meastro once, everyone told me not to, but it was a good car. Felt nice and solid, sounds stupid but i remember the switches felt well made. Twas a 1600 Auto HLS.

[DarrenW]

;D

When Bache’s successor, Roy Axe, took the reins at the head of the Austin Rover design department, he looked at the Montego and, quite simply put, could not believe what he saw. In the eyes of this designer, new to the company, viewing the car as he was, with a fresh pair of eyes, Axe found the styling of the car fundamentally wrong – and pleaded for time to restyle the entire car. He was hamstrung because the company’s need to get the car into production was so great, that Harold Musgrove would not allow him the time or money to modify the styling of the car in anything other than a superficial way. Axe did change the rear windows in order to make them seem less massive and also tided up the front end, and added clever plastic caps to the base of the side windows in order to lessen the dropping waistline featured in the Maestro – but that was it. This situation may have made him unhappy, but he knew that there was nothing he could do: he knew that the car had odd proportions as a side-effect of being based on a smaller car, but worse than that, in Roy Axe’s opinion, the Montego’s obvious ugliness was something else entirely.

Speaking to me in 2002, Axe made his feelings about the Montego abundantly clear, “I was stood in front of it and told that this model was over a year away and so I had a great opportunity to improve it if I felt it was needed! It is hard to know what to say in circumstances like this but my first remarks were that the design should be scrapped and the whole thing done again. This was not acceptable as the plan was well in place but there was room to tweak! The changes were really minimal as the doors had to stay as had the basic form dictated by the structure. I was able to improve the front and get rid of the Maestro look there, some improvements to the rear and by applying admittedly rather crude mounding to the waistline, I was able to minimise the falling look in this area. The result was far from anything I am proud of but was the best I could do plus the chance to replace the facia panel with a new one which could then be applied to the Maestro at a later date.”

From Austin-rover.org.uk

[Imperial]

i had an early 1.6 monty- absolute cack ,gutless and kept not starting,great fun especially having it nicked six times in a month and the numpty head thief never got past the end of my road. ;D
had an mg 2.0efi meastro soon after,fast but really needed the suspension upgrading,i found it a bit soft for fast use.

[PhoenixC]

I have had a few MG maestros and I owned a 1.6 montego for a few month and I have nothing but praise for them. Even the 1.6`s werent too slow. Roomy and comfortable with reasonable handling as standard. The MG maestro is a great handling car and with a moto-build suspension upgrade they were superb. Not too much top end power but loads of low down torque. Never had any reliability problems with mine only rust.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

even the rust is pretty reliable I find.

[monster]

I like montegos but maestros i feel are far too ugly. They're like a metro thats been pumped too much gas at birth. I was following one just yesterday and thought it looked so wrong, a car that looks bad from every angle. Thats my thoughts.

[Blown_Imp]

ive got a turbo exhaust manifold for one of those, mabe the turbo too!

J