Let’s say you hit the proverbial lottery and find a barn find worth mentioning. The car has been down for many years, but from the looks of things, a quick wash and detail will take care of the visual bits, the interior looks quite passable and on the surface, there is nothing stopping you from hitting the key and going. Right? Wrong. The longer a car sits, the more you need to do before you plug in a battery and hit the key for the first time. You do not want the joy of this magical moment to be ruined by the sound of an engine boring itself out, or the smell of hot wiring that’s seconds from combusting. There are processes and checklists you need to go through in order to make sure that you’ll survive that first trip out with your gem.
The car you are looking at is a 1973 Leyland P76. If you immediately thought “British Leyland”, you’re close but not quite on the target. Leyland Australia wanted to compete with the local market cars in Australia, so look at the P76 as a challenger for the Chrysler Valiant, Ford Falcon and Holden Kingswood. The Leyland had plenty to offer the Aussie market and even came with a V8 option (a 269 cubic inch variant of the Rover V8) but sales just weren’t what Leyland were hoping for. It didn’t hurt that strikes at the plants hurt supply and that the car appeared just in time for the first Oil Crisis. By 1975 the car was done and dead. This orange example stayed on the road until just about the time yours truly was born…and is only just now coming back out into the light. Hit play on the videos and check out what it takes to wake up a car that’s been sleeping for thirty-five years!
My wife and I spent a few days at Cottesloe Beach, outside Fremantle in Australia this past February. Gorgeous place. On a walk one day I spotted this exact front end in an open garage and thought, WTFaaa? At first I actually thought is was a Zil, or some other Proletariat-Mobile. On closer inspection I spotted the Leyland badge on the grille. My immediate thought was that this was some Leyland Australia attempt to compete with Holden, Ford, and Chysler, which this article supports. In person it looks like a mashup of multiple styling cues, none of them particularly good. Skinny little faux mag wheels on tiny tires with bus-like body overhang. Plasticy, plastic, plastic-gasm interior. I guess the “good” news is that it survived, and it is a piece of automotive history. The bad news is that there wasn’t a door on that garage.
Just as well this hideous monster was thousands built thousands of miles away in from the UK in Australia. But the bored out motor would have been a perfect fit in the Rover SD1 and some Land Rovers.