The poor old BMC “Landcrab” took some pot-shots on CC a few weeks ago, due to its lackluster sales, uncomfortable driving position, and somewhat awkward styling. There were also the myriad quality, reliability and driveability issues some owners faced. But I must admit I kind of like them, at least from afar. My favorite crustacean however is not exactly a true Landcrab, but the bigger–dare I say Broughamier?–Austin 3-Litre sedan. Landcrab Imperial, anyone?
The whole story of the Austin 3 Liter’s development is a precautionary tale, centered around one key point: don’t let the beancounters tell you what to do. BMC badly needed to replace the long in tooth Austin A110 Westminster (and Wolseley 6/99 and Vanden Plas 3 Litre) in the important 3 liter executive-near luxury market.
A number of early development ideas were floated, but when it came down to really make it happen, the accountants, who increasingly held sway then, determined that the best (read: most economical) solution would be to use the middle body section of the ADO17 Landcrab as a starting point, and then build an otherwise all-new car around that.
BMC’s big inline six was worked over quite a bit, and was the same engine that also went into the ill-fated MGC. There was no way this big and heavy engine could be utilized with FWD, so the ADO61 was designed as a rear wheel drive car from the beginning. The floor pan got a transmission tunnel, and of course the front and rear ends were substantial elongated.
This picture, from aronline.co.uk’s excellent article on the development of the 3 Litre, shows the two cars, with the decidedly longer 3 Litre in front. On the one hand, its new proportions and longer rear deck make it look decidedly less crab-like, but the problem was that it now didn’t look different enough from the plebian ADO17. That was the colossal mistake: in the 3 liter class, owners wanted the the instant recognition and prestige that a unique body afforded.
Of course, that wasn’t the extent of its problems, but we should point out that Alec Issigonis had nothing to do with the 3 Litre; he smelled a bad crab in the works, and washed his hands of it.
image: carandclassic.co.uk
Ironically, this wouldn’t be the last time that a BL car was transformed from FWD to RWD, although the 3 Litre really was essentially a new car. The FWD Triumph 1300 was converted to RWD when they turned it into the Toledo. Totally crazy, and seemingly counter-intuitive. No wonder BMC/BL never had money later on to do a new car; they’d spent it all re-engineering existing models! The Toledo’s CC can be read here.
Introduced at the 1967 London Motor Show (to rather tepid response), the 3-Litre was meant to compete with other British executive-class sedans, including the Rover P5/P5B, Rover P6, and the Triumph 2000/2500. Of course, after the 1968Â BMC-Leyland merger resulting in the infamous British Leyland, all these cars fell under the same corporate umbrella. Despite the first prototypes having been built in 1963 (!), and being introduced at the 1967 London show, the car was delayed and delayed, and finally became available to the public in late 1968.
image: carfamo.com
By 1968, not only was the ADO17-derived styling already well out of date, but the 3 Litre utterly failed to convince its intended “thoroughbred” buyers that it was anything other than a mongrel.
The version that was originally planned to be released was even uglier, with awkward “television” shaped headlights.
Panned by the press, the headlights were quickly redone as round quad units. That still didn’t save the 3 Litre from being considered an ungainly car, at best. At worst, it was reviled.
Things were of course better on the inside, with the typical clubby wood and leather interior. But because of the transmission hump and center tunnel, the 3 Litre actually had less interior room than its FWD body donor.
image: aronline.co.uk
Wolseley and Vanden Plas variants (with even finer interiors) were built as prototypes, but never went into production. Aronline.co.uk has a nice article on the Wolseley verison, with some rare factory pictures here.
image: simoncars.co.uk
That longer hood and longer rear quarters really help the side profile. I am actually seeing a bit of ’60s Lancia in the styling. Not completely off base, as Pininfarina had a hand in the styling.
image: austinmemories.com
Despite the better proportions (to my eyes, at least) and larger engine, just eight shy of 10,000 3-Litres were built between 1968 and 1971, when BL decided to mercifully pull the plug. Part of the reason was the 3.0L six (shared with the MGC and other BL cars) was rather weak chested in such a large, heavy (for Great Britain) car. A shame, really. I like it. Too bad no one else did.
For those of you deigning to know absolutely everything about the 3-Litre, aronline’s excellent writeup can be viewed here. Happy BL motoring!
A big thumbs-up to Bryce for shooting this elusive 3-Litre and posting it to the Cohort!
I think the Wolsley version might have been more of a success as Wolsley were a step up from Austin.The radiator grille seems to suit the car better though I’d still take a Ford Zodiac or Vauxhall Cresta instead It just looks too much like the Land Crab on steroids for me.My headmaster,a dreadful social climbing snob who spent much of his free time ass kissing at the golf club drove a 3 litre Vanden Plas considering the Cresta and Zodiac to be vulgar.The square headlight version is hideous.TheAustin 3 litre was another flop for BL,less than 10,000 sold in 3 years and it was quietly brushed aside with the other duds Thanks for a great write up on a forgotten car Tom
Not entirely forgotten Ive seen that car recently but Zephyrs Zodies and Crestas sold much better here and were much better cars with the exception of the 2.5 V6 that killed any appeal for large English Fords in NZ they were junk right out of the box and we then got the 3L V6 as standard NO 4 banger rep specials out here but MK4s were being sold at huge discounts at the end to try to clear them. Kiwis took to the much improved Aussie Falcon instead new, Used MK4s were usually retrofitted with V8 US sourced engines which improved everything except fuel economy.
Underwhelming engineering, but long-legged grace. The view is particularly good rear 3 quarter. Definitely a candidate for one of Alan Clarke’s Q-cars.
I met him on an animal rights demonstration,a real character.He was a Conservative MP who was a vegetarian,classic car collecting womaniser who lived in a castle with his long suffering wife who put up with his string of mistressesAt one time he was having an affair with a mother and daughter quite ,probably both at once.He showed me a picture of his gorgeous Citroen DS convertible and told me about some of his other cars he had.
He ran a beetle with a Porsche engine and his favourite car was a 2CV I think. Great taste in automotive, but for the mother/daughter alone he has earned his place in history.
You’re not giving him enough credit. A quick Wikipedia lookup credits him with an affair with the wife of a South African barrister and BOTH her daughters, simultaneously.
It’s a wonder Jennifer Clarke didn’t put bromide in his tea.She must have been a saint to put up with him for so long!
Alan Clark. Alan ClarkE is a different person.
Another new one for me. Looking at the side view, I wonder why someone didn’t think to blank out that rear quarter window. I don’t know if vinyl roofs were becoming a thing in the UK at that time, but making one standard would have made the body mods even cheaper. That would have changed the whole look of the car and (perhaps) hidden its obvious kinship to the cheaper Landcrab.
Chrysler later used this trick on the M body Fifth Avenue. Even though it was quite a bit more expensive than the car upon which it was based, the expensive one was the only one that ever sold in real numbers, just because the C pillar mods made the car look right.
There was a Vanden Plas prototype of the 3-litre with four lights and a wrap-around rear screen instead of the six light 3-litre configuration.
http://www.aronline.co.uk/blogs/concepts/concepts-and-prototypes/projects-and-prototypes-vanden-plas/
(somewhere in the middle of that page)
Eek! That VDP prototype is ugly…!
I remember a neighbour buying a Ford Cortina 1600E with a vinyl roof in the late 60s.BL of course didn’t come out with one til the early 70s.Crayford made a few estate versions which looked a bit better,I’ve never seen one in the metal though
Vinyl tops out here were an ordered accessory and were fitted to assembled cars already painted instead of factory stock and being fitted to unpainted roofs so they didnt rust out quite as fast
GT and GTE Cortinas had vinyl tops during this era but I dont know about in the UK, the MK2 GTE Cortina is a NZ only model
The Corsair and Cortina E had vinyl tops and they were shortly offered on the Capri and then the Escort 1300E. You could also get them on the Rover P6 and a number of others.
They did fill in the C pillar on the Australian Tasman-Kimberley updates of the 1800 in 1970 and it was a vast improvement.
On the 3 litre they could have fitted fixed quarter lights in the rear doors as well to match the front quarter lights and to distinguish it from the cheaper models and…mimic the window line of the Silver Shadow.
The traditional Wolseley front end worked well in the same way it worked on the Silver Shadow.
Then they just needed to drop the Rover all alloy V8 in and…make it properly and hey presto…a poor mans Silver Shadow.
Which is how the 3 litre started out – a collaboration with Rolls-Royce.
What were those nice taillights shared with — if anything?
The price didn’t do these any favors — nearly £1,700 with purchase tax for the automatic, which was a lot more than a Rover 2000TC or Triumph 2.5 PI and very close to a Jaguar XJ6. I imagine a lot of 3-Litres have been sacrificed for their engines over the years, since I think there’s more interest in the MGC. (The MGC and 3-Litre versions of the engine aren’t quite the same — the accessories are laid out differently — but I know people have put 3-Litre engines in the C, so it’s obviously not an insuperable problem.)
The 3-Litre/MGC engine is not quite the same as the C-series six in other BMC cars. BMC did some redesign work on it to try to make it smaller and lighter (mostly to fit it into the MGB shell), which they did, but not nearly as much as they had wanted. Unfortunately, they also made a mess of its rev potential and breathing in the process. I suppose if someone were exceedingly perverse, one could do a Downton-style conversion with a lighter flywheel; 175 hp and a lighter flywheel would put more spring in its step (and likely help fuel economy, which was otherwise dismal), but you’d still have the numb power steering to contend with.
Eek, I just looked it up and a 3-Litre auto was only about £95 (the equivalent of $228 in 1969) less than the V8-powered Rover Three Thousand Five, which would leave the Austin for dead in almost any respect, including fuel economy and prestige. That is sort of the definition of “unfavorable market position.”
Not on prestige Rover V8s were not popular when first introduced they were not Proper Rover in the mobile gents club style and didnt appeal to traditional Rover buyers
Somehow the feature car reminds me of Basil Fawlty, trying desperately to sneak up the class ladder. Or maybe it’s just an excuse to watch this. 🙂
The Austin 1100 MkI has such a perfect deadpan expression.
Basil Fawlty was such a loser he had to have an 1100,if he’d had a Land Crab or 3 litre it would have made him look to successful!
I recently found a model 1100 wagon with a Basil Fawlty bashing it with a tree
I’ll have to look for one of those!
There are of course a gazillion reasons this car flopped in the market, because, as I understand it, there was nothing intrisically wrong with the car in itself.
1. Timing. Had it been introduced in 1964, it would have been reasonably within its time. Introduced in 1968, it was a day late and a dollar short. Had it been introduced before the landcrab 1800, the cheaper car would’ve been seen as a derivative of the more expensive car, instead of the other way around.
2. The 3-litre executive car market bottomed out. The old bowler hat brigade was out, the swinging sixties was in. Rover and Triumph successfully cornered that market with their 2-litre premium offerings and everything else turned yesterdays news practically overnight.
Besides, Austin simply didn’t have the brand cachet to carry it on. When middle management got a 3-litre car as a company perk, there was room in the cheaper end of the spectrum. Ford, Vauxhall, Rootes, and Austin all had offerings for that market. When brand consciousness really set in, the entire bottom end of that market disappeared.
3. Nothing can hide that this is a landcrab with a longer front and rear, and people simply aren’t that stupid. Especially not when the car is actually smaller inside than the smaller car it is based on. More expensive, more cramped, less fuel efficient, and without brand recogntion.
4. It became an immediate laughingstock, it was the Pontiac Aztek of its time. It came to represent everything that went wrong with BMC at the time, it was the car that showed the emperor had no clothes. And nothing or nobody could change the fact, and everybody knew it already on its introduction.
This is the lesson GM should’ve learned from before making the ’86 Riviera/Toronado/Eldorado look so much like the N-bodies.
+1
GM USA has followed BMC/BLs downward trajectory almost perfectly same methods same result , bankruptcy. The idea of turning storied brands with cachet into FWD shit boxes killed BMC the same way it killed GM
+1, there’s a horrible similarity between them.The headlong rush to FWD,poor quality control,questionable styling and great marques flushed down the pan
The Wolseley version in photo #10 looks like a Landcrab Edsel.
I,m one of the few Edsel fans here and I think it looks much better.
Years ago Car had a writeup on these and one of the nails in the coffin was the self leveling rear suspension that didn’t. I suppose a Rover V8 conversion would help, assuming it fits in the engine bay. Of course by the time BL had access to the V8 they also had the Rover P6 which was an infinitely more successful executive car.
Ive never driven a 3L Austin but did own a A110 and a A90 while at highschool the pricipal at my boarding school traded his 1800 for one of these Lobsters a lot of the teaching staff drove Jaguars but he had to be different and during subsequent illicit race events the Jags were proved to be faster cars.
By the way the Landcrab moniker comes from the way the rally prepped 1800 S drove on gravel it went sideways constantly with Paddy Hopkirk at the wheel so hence the nickname it has nothing to do with its looks.
The clue also has a NZ number plate and that looks like Karamu Highschool in the background is this one of my shots from wheels on windsor?
Yep, they’re your photos Bryce. I’ve been meaning to do something with them and finally did.
Oh churr Tom feel free I’m impressed by the knowledge you gathered for the post I saw one walking to school as a child with my Dad he said that wont work it looks like the 1800 and its rubbish so that will stop people buying it, and he was right nobody bought them locally,
I’m the proud owner of FI214 these days and aim to keep it in the excellent overall condition I received it in from Mr James in Hastings.
I can only remember ever seeing one of these. I remember the leaked preview photos, and it was obvious BMC would never really make a car that looked so bad – but they did.
The rear end looked quite good, the front was terrible, the wheels and trims just as bad as those of the 1800 ( I ran my 1800 without wheeltrims for that “rally” look) and then there were the doors. Up-market “executive” cars usually used half-frame doors with chrome window surrounds, a-la Jag Mk11. The full-frame doors on the 3-Litre made it look very down-market.
I saw a white one in the early 70s and a dark blue one having new tyres put on at a Kwik Fit in the mid 80s.It was a sales flop and soon discontinued
Surprisingly I still see the odd one of these around. They didn’t seem to be especially rustprone, which helps.
As a BL dealer mechanic my Dad worked on these. One of the older customers had a blue one that had been in storage for a number of years, and Dad had it at our house for a few days around 1990ish while recommissioning it for road use. I remember sitting in it and pondering the dashboard. The woodwork wasn’t as shiny as the photo pictured above and gave a off a vibe of a dry and dusty old gentleman’s club. To 15 year old me, the dashboard looked clunky and far from styled. It felt like Austin’s aim was to out-wood Jaguar, but without thinking about making it look nice, so it came across as heavy-handed and over-imposing. And what, I thought, was with a manual transmission on a supposed luxury car!
Overall, the 3 Litre did feel very solid, and the styling was definitely better balanced than the ADO17. Yet as with the ADO17, it lacked presence. I’d like to own a Wolseley 6/110 or Austin A110 one day, but a 3 Litre? Never.
Incidentally the burgundy 3 Litre photographed in the article with the number plate “FI214” is a New Zealand car, first registered here on 23 December 1970. It’s only done around 45,000ml from new, which explains its nice condition.
You would like a Wolseley smooth and quiet at 100mph my Austin was an auto DG box 72mph in 2nd gear with the variable pitch fully activated it was as rusty as but went like a train but fast and smooth cruise at 90mph plus and it advises you in the handbook to inflate the tyres to 30psi if you plan to do so mine hit 105mph indicated along the Ruakaka plains thats in an oil burning rust bucket but it would cruise at 90 all day on good roads in comfort, they were ministerial cars in the UK at one point, good cars get one if you can.
Greta write nup Tom, even if you have beaten me to doing it! (I was planning a write up to complete a Landcrab trilogy with the 1800 and the Maxi).
My favourite feature of this car was the self levelling suspension. It did keep the car level, at the attitutde it was in when the engne was started. So, park up, load up, passengers in, start up, drive away, at a consistent attitiude……
I for one would still like to read your take on the “Land Lobster.” You just might want to wait a bit before running it 🙂
Wot is there to say about this car it was a disaster from the of..but visit rover online and you will see the vandenplas 3ltr prototype using the Australian Austin tasmin,Kimberly body shell ..spot on…if they had given that car the go ahead they’d have had a winner as that car was just right…have a look
Only if they stayed RWD the Tasman/ Kimberly powertrain wasnt good.
And they were still at the same game in the 90’s when, as a last-ditch effort to save the Rover brand, they somehow shoehorned a Mustang drivetrain into the ‘stately’ Rover 75. It didn’t work. Surprise.
An even bigger sales flop,I’ve yet to see one in the metal
I’ve seen one late model 75 V8 in the metal Gem! There are at least two in NZ – one MG-badged one that was for sale last year and the Rover I saw. It drove by me and I spotted a ‘V8’ badge on it. “Can’t be”, I thought, but I followed it for a short while with my window down, and oh yes, a V8 and sounded great! A rego-check confirmed it was a genuine NZ-new 75 V8. Yummy!
I asked my Dad about the blue 3L he was working on back in the day, and he reminded me it was one of three in our hometown. I’d completely forgotten, but the owner of the BL/Honda dealer where Dad worked had a deep red 3L (same colour as PLJ413G above), and there was also a green one. Our hometown had a population of 3,000ish in the mid-late 1980s, so with three 3Ls in town, that makes a ratio of one Austin 3L per 1,000 people. I’d wager that’s a fairly high ratio lol!
Now I remember it, Dad’s boss’s red 3L had a towbar on the front, as his boss liked to launch his boat into the lake that way. Not sure why, traction-related maybe?
The work Dad was doing on the blue one was getting the self-levelling suspension working – successfully too I might add!
Hi Scott. I own FI214 these days just clocked 51,000 miles. I also bought a blue one from Levin needs a little recommissioning. Keen to hear if you have any info or history on others.