Have just seen advertised for sale an Austin Maestro 1.3, 5 Door, 12000 miles.
It is advertised as a 2002 '51' Reg.
Can this be correct? I thought they stopped making these about 10 years ago, so has it been lying around unregisterd somewhere for years?
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I believe there were some unregistered MOD cars sold off recently. So this is probably one of them.
Charles
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There was (and probably still is) a T-plate Maestro running around Chorley as a taxi. I did a double take when I first saw it!
I seem to recall a while ago a feature on one of the motoring programmes saying that Maestros are still being built overseas (a la Hindustan Ambassador et al) so maybe that's where it came from. Although why anybody would go to all the trouble and expense of shipping over and getting type approval for a Maestro is beyond even my superior intellect ;-)
Cheers
Rob
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Just out of interest, Chris, how much was it going for?
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Maestro's are being built in China with a montego nose. There were some recently sold which were made out of kits that were stockpiled due to an ill fated Bulgarian venture
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Some Maestros were "built" CKD (complete knock down) for export and re-assembly in Romania or maybe Bulgaria, but not paid for so were eventually built up in the UK many years later. They only comply with safety and emissions regulations at date of original build but get a registration number relating to the date of first registration. Presumably, getting a MOT means jumping through hoops, every year!
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& the last I heard, the guy that bought the final kits, was having problems with getting them registered. Only a couple a week, or some tiny amount, that he probably wished he'd not bothered.
Onla available in red, white, or dark blue, very patriotic!
Plus they were originally intended for left hand drive, so you have to provide your own floor mat on the drivers side, the passenger gets one affixed to the carpet, already!!
An under-rated car, in it's time.
VB
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There's an 'X' prefix black Maestro knocking about my neck of the woods.
I seem to remember an article on Top Gear three or four years back that said they'd been kits that were never exported.
The one i've seen is mint which is what made me give it a second look when I saw it.
I'll try and get a photo!
PP
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Under- rated? I had one "in its time". OK so it was fairly roomy, quite good ride and handled tidily, but it was engineered and built by monkeys. Broke down (and mean broke down - stranded) every month for two years.
Under rated my foot.
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I understood that there was a company in Ledbury, Herefordshire making these. Mind you, may have been 5 or so years ago.
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Under- rated? I had one "in its time". OK so it was fairly roomy, quite good ride and handled tidily, but it was engineered and built by monkeys. Broke down (and mean broke down - stranded) every month for two years. Under rated my foot.
Oooh I don't know, my dad drove nothing but Maestros for years, he never paid more than £1000 for any of them (often quite a bit less), usually getting them at the 70-80K mark, he would invariably get them to about 100-120K before anything major went wrong, at which point he just bought another. (I seem to recall he got one to about 135K.)
Parts were dirt cheap when small things did go wrong, and whilst the 1.3 was quite the most horribly sluggish thing ever, the later 1.6s were reasonable to drive and quite well equipped. (In a not-very-good sort of way, if that makes sense.)
Comfy on long runs, and would sit at 80mph on the motorway for hours at a time no problem.
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A quick Google search threw up this link on the subject;
www.maestroweb.co.uk/pages/at02.html
PP
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Saw an R reg one on the M6 the other day. Did a double-take..
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The Turbo diesel model was a real scream, it could dominate the fast lane while still returning good MPG. It was comfy as well. Downsides were it was noisy (even for a diesel), rusted very quickly; and damn it - it was a Maestro! Quite liked it though, especially as you could leave it in the station car park all day and know it would still be there in the evening.
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We had one of these in the family (SWMBO's Company Car) kept it for two years. A brilliant motor, excellent handling. It was a late reg one (I think a H) - and outclassed the Escort that replaced it. The Maestro had a soul.
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Agree with pugugly, the Maestro was a good car.
I had one for two years from new, a G Reg 1.3L and it was 100% reliable over 30K, smooth, quiet, handled well and had exceptionally comfortable seats, big and quiet sunroof and an excellent stereo.
I had a 1.4L Escort before that which was cramped, crashy and horribly unreliable, including a snapped cam belt at 20K requiring a complete engine rebuild.
A friend still runs an MG Maestro 2.0 EFI and swears by it.
Maestro's only fault was that it was by British Leyland and how the brits love to knock their own.
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Ah the Maestro, bitter sweet memories of my Vanden Plas come flooding back, the (relatively) good performance, the astronomical running costs, the rust, the irritating voice computer thing that never worked properly....
Was rear ended and written off, the insurance assessor must have been on drugs when he inspected it because he valued it at £800, I would have taken his hand off for £200!
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I'm a loser, baby....so why don't you kill me?!
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I owned an H reg 2 litre diesel which i only bought because it was very cheap and when it comes to cars i am notoriously mean.
Have to say i thrashed it on occasions but the engine seemed un braekable and seemed to be very frugal.
Unbelieveably the day i sold it for 70 pounds it broke down for the first time in 2 years,so i gave the bloke 50 pounds back to get the injector pipes done.The other strange thing was one of my dogs hated it and always threw up on the back seat.Happy days
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I have to admit to having a soft spot for these motors.
We had a 1.3 in the family, which i learnt to drive in at 17, and subsequently drove into the ground. I was very sad when it was eventually replaced with an astra. Despite all its faults it represented my access all areas pass out of nowhere. Everyone seems to have a Maestro story, perhaps they weren't as bad as we remember after all?
[/rosetints]
Ed.
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Maestroweb said:
When the Maestro's production was discontinued in 1994 a deal was decided upon whereby a number of bodyshells would be exported to Bulgaria for construction there, to enable small scale local assembly based on supply of CKD kits from the UK. Unfortunately the project collapsed because of market changes - the flood of used (stolen?) cars from the west, Skoda reducing prices on the Felicia to undercut the Maestro as it was launched, and Daewoo setting up a factory there to build cheaper Astra-based Nexias. About 2000 cars were made and about 1700 were exported around the world - over 1000 went to South America (550 to Uruguay and 400 to Argentina), plus 200 to Macedonia, and others to Jordan and Syria. The remaining Maestro kits that had not been exported became surplus to requirement... until Trans European Trading stepped in and bought up 621 kits (saloons and vans) which were assembled on the premises of a small service station in Ledbury, Herefordshire. This was to be the first time since 1994 that the Maestro was available new in the UK. The new cars had a very basic specification not far removed from the Clubman models and used the old 1.3 litre A+ engine. They appealed to a vast number due to their low price and simplicity, being in high demand all the time they were being offered.
Murray Walker said in "Unless I'm very much mistaken", p350:
"[Owner of Minardi F1 team] Paul [Stoddart] has made himself a very wealthy man by building up a worldwide, 24-hours-a-day aircraft parts business, as well as numerous other enterprises ranging from aircraft leasing and seats to building right-hand-drive Austin Maestros from new parts that were originally intended for assembly in Bulgaria".
So now you see why the F1 fan should drive a Maestro! well a Minardi fan should at least!
pat
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Sorry for the delay in replying to this.
The Maestro is up for sale at £2290.00.
Can't be bad for a 2002 car with 12000 miles. Can it?
It can be seen at www.murdomurchison.co.uk then click on stocklist.
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£2290 for a Maestro?
How about some serious thought for depreciation, emissions, spares.. and rust.
CKD kits assembled after x years in storage? More rust where you can't see it in the seams and welded joints is virtually 100% certain..
The words " bargepole, wouldn't touch a with " spring to mind.
If it was £750... that's a different matter.
madf
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It looks 10 years old on that photo!
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I'm a loser, baby....so why don't you kill me?!
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Agreed, the car would have looked much better if they'd managed to put some trim on it, as it is, it looks no different from every other 15 year old Maestro although it has less rust, and the interior is still spotless...
Blue
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The basic Maestro concept was a trailblazer, just that the build quality etc didn't match it.
I seem to remember Top Gear doing a piece about some firm in the south who build and sell them for around £5,000.
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