Topic: Something for all you closet British Leyland freaks.
I thought I'd share this in case any of the more adventurous Lemon's lunatics are interested:
MotorPunk is pleased to announce a rather important event. “Harris Mann(k)* to Casablanca” is a one-way roadtrip to the dark continent solely for cars designed by the notorious British Leyland designer, Harris Mann. A peruse of his Wikipedia page will tell you that Mr Mann drew some of BL’s least loved creations including the Allegro, Maestro, TR7, Princess and Metro, amongst others. Now, laying the blame for these automotive horrors squarely at the feet of Harris Mann is perhaps a little unkind, as Mann himself explains; “When I look back on my career, it’s been fun. It’s such a pity it ran through such a period of discontent at BL.” These models are best known for their unreliability rather than their design flaws and perhaps time has looked unfavourably on them. Examples of these cars can now be bought, taxed and tested, for less than a set of Chinese tyres. For this trip we have bought this Metro for £300. We may have paid too much. It has a 4 speed manual gearbox and a 1.1 litre engine that hasn't seen a spanner in a decade. BL geeks will note the sagging front hydragas suspension.
The experiment; Manufacturers use rallying to test the robustness of their design and Formula 1 is considered the pinnacle of motorsport’s technical development, so in the spirit of that MotorPunk cordially invites you to join them on this unique roadtrip.
We will drive from Cowley (UK) to Casablanca (Morocco) to put examples of Harris Mann’s mankiest motors to the test. A rally to Morocco will prove the reliability of these models and a hot lap of the 1958 Casablanca Grand Prix circuit will test their ultimate performance. There will be fun and games along the way as you might expect. Anyone who might become emotionally attached to their Longbridge lovely is free to drive it back to blighty but we’ll be scrapping ours in Gibraltar and Easyjetting home, assuming the cars get that far.
If participants get lost, killed or otherwise inconvenienced they should call the British Embassy or their Mum because we’ll have enough on our hands with our recently acquired Metro to be able to provide you with any assistance. There will photos and videos taken and the results of this unique roadtrip/experiment published on MotorPunk and elsewhere to share with the world. We have a Rover Metro 1.1, an Austin Maestro and a Rover 216i automatic already and welcome anyone else who speaks foreign, can fix things or owns a pith helmet and a rifle.
Interested?
Details here > http://www.motorpunk.co.uk/carclub-18-3 … asablanca/ and here > https://www.facebook.com/groups/1476585719254246/
* Mank (UK, slang) Something that is disgusting