Brand new car -102miles- £3250

heartbreak_star

Ahh memories! My parents had a Maestro for years, my dad absolutely loved it

HBS x

silverwhistle

I have memories of the company I worked for having Maestro pool cars with 2.0L Perkins diesels. Very economical apparently, but I had the unnerving experience of dropping down a gear, pulling out to overtake a tractor on a slight incline and having to hastily pull back in again as there was just no acceleration at all. Given that my own personal transport at the time was a banger of a Marina I was somewhat put out!

It was also great a couple of times being able to refuse a car on safety grounds (illegal tyre and no rearview mirror) as that meant a visit to head office would be by somebody's posh company car.

Gloomendoom

Driven loads of them, nothing special but really no worse than anything similar available at the time.

shaun_from_Africa

patman99 wrote: »

They had the best all-round visibility of any car ever made.

Better than this?

BeenThroughItAll

silverwhistle wrote: »

I have memories of the company I worked for having Maestro pool cars with 2.0L Perkins diesels. Very economical apparently, but I had the unnerving experience of dropping down a gear, pulling out to overtake a tractor on a slight incline and having to hastily pull back in again as there was just no acceleration at all. Given that my own personal transport at the time was a banger of a Marina I was somewhat put out!

Must have been something wrong with it, my parents' 2.0 diesel Montego used to go like a rocket. Brilliant thing.


Edit: Following a little MSE-provoked reading, it appears that the Maestro's earlier 2.0D option was a NA DI engine. No wonder it was slow. I'd always assumed they all had the same Perkins Prima engine.

Mr_Toad

motorguy wrote: »

I sold Austin Rovers new from 1988 for a couple of years, so in and around when the "You aint seen nothing yet" two tone Montegos and Maestros came onto the market.

They sold in decent numbers - particularly the Maestro. My dad had a 1985 1.3 Montego, then a 1.6L. Got years out of them both with no major bills.

After selling my car and not knowing what I really wanted as a replacement I decided to get a runabout from auction and ended up with a dog t*td brown 1.6 Montego Auto.

To be honest I couldn't really fault it, it did the job and was, dare I say it, reliable. I sold it after a year for a few quid more than I paid for it and went back to the auction for something else.

As it happened that something else was a two tone, red over grey, 2.0 Montego auto estate. Another reliable workhorse that had the space to carry all sorts of things. Ugly they might have been but that estate car took me and the family all over France, Spain and Italy and helped move house before I sold it.

My brother in law had the talking MG Maestro which was ever so slightly irritating every time it spoke!

force_ten

soolin wrote: »

I Had a Maestro as a company car but didn't have it long enough to see any rust. I regularly thrashed it up and down the M11 with the steering wheel shaking , and with road noise so loud I couldn't hear the radio at all.

I used to have one of them it was a 1986 1.6 hls and was the first car i ever owned with a five speed box and at first i thought it was an OK car, when i first had it at six months old it drove nice and handled ok,ish

as the miles crept up and it got to 18 months old the front suspension started to wear and at 60 mph both front wheels suffered from chatter that created a horrible shake in the steering column and once it started the only way to stop it was slow down

i soon got fed up and faced with a big bill for new front suspension it was traded for a near new ford orion in 1988

no rust on mine but only kept for two years

silverwhistle

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

Must have been something wrong with it, my parents' 2.0 diesel Montego used to go like a rocket. Brilliant thing.


Edit: Following a little MSE-provoked reading, it appears that the Maestro's earlier 2.0D option was a NA DI engine. No wonder it was slow. I'd always assumed they all had the same Perkins Prima engine.

Thanks for the edit! Wouldn't want to think my memory was failing.:oThe Maestro's were replaced by Peugeot 1.9 diesels, and they were a _lot_ livelier...