(first posted 12/20/2018) Benoît found and posted something a bit out of the ordinary for us to savor. It’s a Vanden Plas Princess 1100, the most luxurious and prestigious member of the BMC AD16 family. Alfred Sloan would have loved the ADO16, as it covered every step of his ladder: An ADO16 for every purse. Or in England: An ADO16 for every class.
Starting at the bottom, there were the Austin and Morris 1100s, the Chevrolets of the family.
The MG, like this one that lives around the corner from me, was the sporty Pontiac.
The Wolseley could play the role of the Oldsmobile.
And the Riley Kestral makes a fine Buick stand-in.
And then there’s the Vanden Plas princess 1100/1300, at the very top of the ladder.
If its big grille and driving/fog lights don’t make that clear from the outside, opening a door certainly will.
It was an interesting time in London, in the mid 60s, as a new generation of snobs tried to upend the traditional status of size, by espousing very small but finely trimmed cars, like this Radford Mini, which cost several times as much as a Mini Cooper. We covered the Radford and its ilk here. Needless to say, this was a rather short fad. Before long, nicely trimmed Ranger Rovers had taken their place.
Fantastic find. James May put it well; the VandenPlas family cars symbolised everything that was wrong with Britain at the time.
And in 2019, “today’s smart car…” takes on a whole ‘nother meaning when you think of Smart cars with mediocre performance that are gas hogs (for their class) and eat transmissions.
So was the Vanden Plas similar in those respects?
Sorry I went there, but it was low-hanging fruit.
You’re half right. They were roomy and had excellent ride and handling.
But they found transmissions quite tasty.
Only the automatics. Manual boxes could lose 2nd gear synchro but generally lasted as long as the engine.
The engine-oil-sharing auto was surely clever, but it shifted with all the smoothness of a Smartcar, in the sweet months it was working at all. The 1300 auto I drove occasionally used silly amounts of fuel for the size, although at least that was in proportion to the large-car turning circle. That last was a feature that one grew to know well if there were road features along one’s journey called “inclines” – a u-turn was the triumph of dignity over embarrassment, because, whilst performance was ok for a small auto of the time, the old dear got the hot flushes by the top of any hill on any day not resembling a foggy winter’s evening in London. Then there one would sit 3/4 up the hill, trying desperately to phoof air under the side-mount radiator, as if wafting under her kickers, with a corresponding bad odor of heat and leaked oil being the only response. They only held oil for a brief and passing phase, throwing most of it about the neighborhood for kicks, and farting in the face of the enraged drivers stuck behind by burning the rest. Then the ring gear stripped. Then the alternator died. Then, like all of them, Her Junior Majesty leaked, sighed, and went into a Hydrolastic slump from which the only future lay at the wrecking yard.
It WAS roomy, comfy, and it DID handle well.
Just not often.
I had an automatic Morris 1100 for a couple of years as my first car. Never gave me any trouble, although I did have to replace the CV joints as they became noisy whenever I had to negotiate tight corners.
Actually, the Riley was usually positioned above the Wolseley on the BMC ladder – it had a nicer interior with more wood, and a higher performance drivetrain (if available). One unusual variation of the Vanden Plas was the MG Princess. Apparently this was a 1964-1965 US-only model and according to AROnline only 154 were made. The illustration curiously shows a right hand drive car.
Oh my; just goes to show I have a hard time with the British class structure. 🙂
But then Buick and Olds weren’t always perfectly clearly differentiated either. But I’ll fix it.
ChryCo had some difficulty over the years in deciding where DeSoto fit in.
Wasn’t DeSoto between Chrysler (high) and Dodge (lower) then Plymouth (lowest) in the MoPar hierachy? I know they had pricing issues where you might find a DeSoto to be more expensive than a given Chrysler or a Plymouth more expensive than a Dodge, but I think that was part of the disarray back then, rather than trying to keep one guessing about the hierarchy,
I don’t know much about Riley cars, other than a chance visit to a now defunct auto museum in Kingston, PA…probably about 1994 we were visiting my Grandmother who lived nearby, and my Father took pity on me since there was little for me to do when he heard about the museum and we both went…turned out it was in its final days, the owner was there and kind of gave us a “what took you so long” harangue since apparently they’d been open for some time with few visitors (which is why he was closing it down). His last name was Riley, and his respectable collection included an unusual (for the US…where it was never sold) number of Riley cars.. I’ve been to the UK 3 or 4 times, and never looked for a Riley there, so I can say that if not for having gone to this museum, I would never have seen a single (let alone several, which he had) Riley cars in person. The thing I wondered about is why he thought the museum would pan out, from my experience it would have not been a place I’d choose to put any auto museum, let alone one that had a bunch of cars from a marque obscure to people who would go there, mostly locals with relatives or people who’s kids went to college nearby.
The cars that killed BMC/BL, the upscale versions are quite rare here these days but the basic Austin and Morris cars are still quite common despite the reputation they had, it appears if you lived near a competent dealer you were ok when, not if things went wrong, Suspension collapse was a common ailment, never mind how much gingerbread was on the outside or nice the inside appointments were it still rode on hydralastic suspension and had the transmission in the engine oil pan and those two items gave trouble,
BMC/BL did this upscale trick on almost everything they built, though Vanden Plas came only in ADO16 and Westminster 3&4 litre form, the latter having a Rolls engine and R badge to really make you feel flash.
Don’t forget the legendary VP Allegro! Was there a VP version of the 70s Princess, or am I just thinking of the Wolseley version?
Hey it’s just occurred to me that I used to drive a Leyland for Wolseley. (Build Center is or was part of the original Wolseley company and the LFs have a sticker in the door jamb saying “Built by Leyland Trucks”)
A prototype version of a VP Princess was created, but it never went anywhere.
Easy to see why…..
I love it. But then, out of the production versions, I liked the Wolseley version of the Princess the most.
I found the frond end of the Wolseley version to be strangely pinched-looking. Interestingly, the Austin, Morris, and Wolseley versions of the 18-22 only lasted around six months. After that all the marque names were removed and the Austin version was renamed simply Princess. It was one of the conditions of the government propping up British Leyland.
I like your logic!
They were fantastic cars if you had a mechanic who would work on them. My aunt traded hers after the Leyland dealer closed and nobody else in a town of 6000 would touch it.
I’m always curious about why mechanics would refuse to work on a particular car; at first glance you’d think business was business. Was it parts availability, or the vehicles being a pain to work on from an engineering standpoint? Or just not worth their time, given the number of other cars to work on?
Quite a lot of unpleasant service operations on these. Usual British unconcern with the lower-class greasy mechanic-type.
My aunt traded here about six years after Leyland went belly-up in Australia. The 1100 was replaced by the 1500 in ’70 here IIRC, then that got ‘replaced’ by the Marina (yeah, I can hear you groaning from here), and then that in turn went away when Leyland went kablooie in ’75. Say what you like about Leyland Australia, but at least they tried to update their product line and respond to what the Aussie market seemed to want. That seemed to be Japanese medium-size RWD cars, hence the Marina’s place in our market; not the position it occupied in the UK.
So the 1100 had been replaced several times over and obsoleted by the closure of the company by the time Auntie Merle traded hers. The spares supply seemed to have dried up unless you knew the specialist businesses who collared all the good stuff to save it from being scrapped.
And as Millmech said, they were a pain to work on if you didn’t know the tricks needed to service them, and not much less of a pain if you did. Auntie Merle’s was jumping out of gear, and with the gearbox in the sump – you can guess the rest.
Like the VWs got nicknamed Hitlers revenge, these got called Churchills revenge.
Obviously you omitted the 2-door versions – I remember the MG as a 2-door – and the 3-door wagon. Yes the Riley was top-dog before BMC lost the plot and gave us a VP model.
These were fine cars when they were working properly and vied with the Cortina for top spot in the sales charts.
I think you are a little unkind with your comments about the Mini. After Queen Elizabeths’ brother-in-law was seen driving one it became classless, and it made a lot of sense in London traffic. It was just a little basic in standard form…..
I wasn’t talking about the Mini. I strictly referred to the Radford, which cost about 3 Minis. Or more. A Radford was not “classless”.
IMHO, the Radford Mini and the like were the first iteration of the phenomenon we now see in the highly tailored Range Rovers and similar presented by the likes of Khan Design, for example, presented on what had become a classless, fashionable product. Volumes were very low, and prices were extreme.
I say this all the time but feel duty-bound to repeat myself – beware of overstating the role of the class system in the creation of these cars. I’d suggest the VandenPlas wasn’t the most prestigious either, unless you were relatively old and fuddy-duddy. My guess is younger buyers would prefer a Riley if they wanted a “nice” ADO16.
I wouldn’t necessarily associate Radford and W&P Minis with “snobs”. The Mini was a fantastic car for a London resident, and was sporty, but not particularly comfortable or well appointed. Gap in the market.
Choosing a relatively subtly pimped Mini over a larger car from a luxury/semi-luxury brand wasn’t snobbery, it was a subversion of it -and many wealthy and famous people drove stock Minis too.
Snob (def): a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.
If that doesn’t apply to someone paying 3-4 times the price of a Mini for a Radford, I don’t know what does.
Someone who is used to driving larger, luxurious cars who wants a Mini and can afford the Radford?
Are all those Americans who “can’t” drive a particular car because it has too few cupholders snobs?
“Snob” is handy because it fits in with hoary American trope of “Oh my God, look at the British with their medieval class system!”, but it’s a bit of a leap.
It has little or nothing to do with the British class system. You’re reading way too much into the word ‘snob”. Re-read the definition.
The folks who bought Radfords were wearing the very latest boutique fashions, and could afford whatever was extremely in and cool. They were the trend setters and style-makers. And as such, they inherently were “a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.” You think not?
Snobbery isn’t that derogatory. I’m a snob, as I’ve made perfectly clear here repeatedly over the years. I happen to think that European auto styling and interior design in the 70s and 80s was vastly superior to the American approach (Broughams). I have no problem with that.
Anyway, you’re reading way too much into this post. In fact you missed the whole point of it: that the classic GM Sloan ladder was quite the same as the BMC “class structure”.
You think America is classless? au contraire. If anything, that’s the ultimate hoary trope. And it’s becoming more class-structured by the year.
No that’s absolutely not my view of America.
In fact I’m probably touchy from years of working as a tour guide in the UK and having Americans (and occasionally others) explain to me with complete certainty what life is like in the UK, having stepped off the plane 2 hours previously. Their views of both the US and UK society were often fairytales.
I actually have little sympathy for the British “elite” but I do have sympathy for people who bought Radford Minis 😉 .I’m sure many of them were snobs, as were many who just bought a stock Mini, but the car had a clear purpose – for example it’s nowhere near as snobby as buying a Chevillac Surbalade, as the Radford was so different from the stock Mini, and the average passer by probably wouldn’t notice too much difference, far less know how much it cost.
I beg to differ. Folks driving a Suburban are incapable of being snobs. It exudes absolutely no genuine status.
Maybe you don’t get what a snob is. A snob really does have to have something superior in their attributes, knowledge or possessions. A hi-fi snob has a $15k (or more) system at home. An art snob owns a Picasso or Warhol or such. A food snob has eaten at Noma. A classic car snob owns a vintage Porsche or Ferrari or Tatra. You can’t be snob unless you can actually hold it over someone else.
My point is that the folks who bought Radfords did it because it was the ultimate expression of the Mini fad. As you know, the Mini became the in city car in London, in an expression of reverse snobbery against the old farts in their big Armstrong Siddeley Saphires and Daimlers.
Reverse snobbery is just the same as snobbery. You’ve one-upped them because on the surface the Mini or Radford is tiny, but it’s now much cooler because everything old has been turned on its head, which is of course what the 60s were all about. So a Mini have been cool, but a Radford set you up to be the coolest. No one could top that, in terms of the new pecking order.
And lets face it, folks bought a Radford for just that reason, not because it was practical. Right? It was the Porsche Turbo of its time, or the F40, or…
Are you getting my point yet?
I got your point long ago, I just disagree! I typed a really well thought out response which demolished all your points and it said “You’re posting too quickly” which is clearly a conspiracy on your part. I’m on Summit 120 Shilling now and can’t continue.
So I’ll be very British and say “Bollocks”.
PS I once bought my dad Spanish ham for Christmas. It was ludicrously expensive, cave aged, pigs fed acorns exclusively. It just tasted of nuts.
I’ll stop there. It’s your ball.
Oh, I rather think you’ll find, tonito old boy, that bollocks were not an option even in one’s Radford.
Ringo had a Radford customised to fit his drumkit, they werent cheap and they’d build it to your spec if asked.
My father bought a four-door MG 1100 in the 1960s to replace his 1959 Volkswagen Käfer. He had a huge buyer’s remorse because he was so frustrated with its congential and frequent mechanical problems. The only advantage of MG 1100 was my older brother picking up lot of mechanical repair skills.
The little lad in the photo is my older brother, Andy.
@OliverTwist – looks like you uploaded the wrong photo! 🙂
Yeah, I had no idea that I picked wrong photo…
It’s amazing to me that they even sold one of those in Germany.
I still remember the Matchbox version of the MG 1100, which was painted bright green and featured a dog looking out one of the side windows.
Which I still have!
Urban chique avant-la-lettre.
I could own one of these, maybe just maybe fit Cosmic alloys wheels
Everybody can moan and complain about built quality and reliabilty, but these were supermodern with their FWD and drivetrain layout.
Mom once drove her Glider (the dutch name for these) at night over a twisty wintery dyke (Dutch, remember). At one point she stopped and asked little petrolhead Rammstein to check the wheels, coz’ she was sure we had a flat.
Little Rammstein got out of the car and immediately fell on his little Rammstein ass.
The dyke was completely frozen and slippery as hell, the Glider simply took the dyke, with a Beetle or anything else we would have probably skidded into the uiterwaard (a pastry which gets flooded by the river in wintertime)
I loved her Austin Glider in metallic grey with red leather upholstery, even that one was urban chique. Dunnow why it was traded in for an automatic Renault 8. Not even a Gordini, I was very disappointed!
My dad had a 1961 Austin 850 (Mini), purchased new for $850 in NYC..
When in for servicing at the “Foreign Cars” place — as a loaner, they’d occasionally give him an MG 1100.
Compared to the Mini, the MG was a massive piece of work. Seemed solid & luxurious, as compared to the playfulness of the Mini.
I suppose today, any of those MG variants would be called tin cans, but, we who have experienced them from the start ….. know better.
So to pull in another of today’s posts, these could be seen as the J-cars of their time. Compact, tidy, popular, and one at every price point.
Of course these could also be seen as the anti J-cars, modern and well-packaged as opposed to the highly conventional J’s (which were just adopting FWD in 1982, nearly 20 years later.)
In which case the Vanden Plas is the British Cimarron. But was it regarded in Britain the same way the Cim was here, as an obvious lipstick-on-a-pig fraud, or did buyers happily play along with the badge/trim engineering game?
They were even more obvious than the Cimarron. If they were anything like the VdP Allegro they were mostly driven by tea sipping old ladies, not upwardly mobile professionals trying to impress their colleagues.
Then there was the US version. My dad offered that a nephew of his worked for BL in New Jersey and could get me one at the A plan price. CR and R&T both went on, at length, about the wretched build quality.
I used to see an orange America around Kalamazoo from time to time, the last time being around June of 1980.
When I was in grad school in 81, I saw an amazingly clean, white 71 America, with it’s revised grill, almost daily.
The premium small car was always a hard sell so the 1100 VDP is a rare success. Unlike the Lancia Y10 which never sold well, or the Aston Marin Cygnet which was more of a novelty item,
I’ve never seen one of these on the road although a preschool classmate’s parents had a BRG MG 1100 just like my Matchbox car.
The Vanden Plas versions became very fashionable in Japan in the 1990s.
Yes they were a mate of mine bought used JDM cars for export to NZ and British cars like these to send back to Japan, NZ was littered with ADO16s and Minis in that era now they sell for stupid money here because they are becoming rare.
Was it successful though? I’m just old enough to recall when ADO16s were still daily drivers, and I’ve never ever seen a Vanden Plas, or MG version for that matter, in the flesh.
I did walk to school past a VdP Allegro everyday and I have to say the interior looked very inviting.
They built 43,000 which sounds successful to me, given there was almost zero development cost.
My analogy for these would be the classless VW Golf versus the Audi A3. Probably doesn’t quite fit the comparison perfectly because VW is not at the bottom of the hierarchy against the Skoda & Seat.
No! The thing that makes these delightful (and I really do like ’em) is the fact that they look exactly like an 1100 externally, with a Parthenon grille glued on. Where VW has been super clever in doing the same thing – charging a premium for the same product – is that they look like different cars to a non-expert. Whereas a VDP Princess 1100 looks to most like Mr MiseryGut’s vinyl bench-seated gasmeter-dashboarded Morrie 1100 econo-special. VW exploits the badge snobbery: BMC/BL just created comedy!
I suppose another modern example of this brand hierarchy is the BMW 1 and 2 Series that’s shared with the current Mini architecture and recently featured on CC.
BMC also made posh Minis in-house. Wolseley Hornet and Riley Elf.
Of course, those had boots. You had to be in South Africa to get a proper Wolseley Mini, the Wolseley 1000.
https://www.aronline.co.uk/around-the-world/leyland-south-africa/mini-overseas-south-africa/
I think you could also fine tune the BMC Austin+Morris/MG/Riley/Wolseley/VDP ladder against the Ford deluxe/super/GT/1600E ladder, and it does get complicated when you remember that in the UK market there were 2 dealer chains for many years – Austin selling Austins and VDP, and Nuffield, selling Morris, Riley, Wolseley and MG. Yes, BMC did badge engineer but they inherited the practice from Nuffield, not Austin.
Some argue it worked – this was the UK market best seller for nearly 10 years. But did it make much money?
You can parallel Rootes as well – Hillman – Singer – Sunbeam – Humber seems to go well with Chevrolet – Oldsmobile – Pontiac – Buick.
Just saw this photo on a Facebook page I’m part of…
CC effect in full force!!
Firstly, I just KNOW the title is mis-pronouncing this. It’s Van-Den-PLASSS, peasants, not “plarrhh” or somesuch. Pronounce the “s” or move on to the Ford showroom, you.
Secondly, it’s the Vanden Plas “Prins-ay”, alright?
Alright, it’s not, but I’m attempting to weed out both the riff and the raff.
I absolutely, genuinely, love these absurd little snuff-boxes. I’d have one.
I love that 43,000 mouldies – whose worldview meant that their sitting in the car quickly puckered the leather in one central spot – parted with their meanly hard-saved to buy one. I love the fact that this wasn’t corporate cynicism exploiting a market gap, but a sincere offering to Those For Whom Their Empire’s Sun Never Set, even well after it sure had. I love the fact that these actually went unfinished into London to be fitted out by craftsmen – they were all men – alongside the big Princesses or Jags. The hell with the fact that the base car was (according to Ford) probably losing money per unit, let’s increase the loss – this nonsense just HAD to for the selling price – and keep a lip upper stiffed.
It is the car Captain Mainwaring could safely maintain his bank branch-manager superiority in, even into retirement. (“No, it’s a Vanden Plasss, you stupid boy.”)
If one had to suffer the indignities or necessities of a small car, one could do a great deal worse than to endure that economy in a version NOT outfitted by that austere Greek fellow, Issigonis, but by People Like Us.
God save The Princess, what.
I bet Hyacinth “Bookay” had one before she dragged poor Richard down to trade it in on the “Rover”.
I am reminded of the 1960s-70s Chrysler C body that stretched from the Plymouth Fury I fleet special to the Imperial LeBaron. I gather that the VDP was relatively more successful than was Imperial at coaxing buyers to accept exceptional trimming of a more plebian structure.
This reminds me again that I am a sucker for the classic British wood and leather interior.
Aw, cute! Isn’t that the child of that nice couple down the street, the Volvo 164 and…ah…I’m drawing a blank on its spouse…
Back in the day, I could spot at 100 paces exactly who in Acacia Avenue would buy which version, be it an Austin, Morris, MG, Wolseley, Riley or Vanden Plas. My father gave up on Fords for a few years when they brought out the diabolically awful 1966 MkIV Zephyr and Zodiac and a 1968 Morris 1800 Landcrab duly materialised in the drive, all my prodding in the direction of a wood ‘n’ leather Wolseley 18/85 version having been in vain. Here’s a picture of the Ford so you can all avoid it like the plague. Get the spiked running shoes on NOW!
Interestingly those MK4 Fords made Australian Falcons the favourite big Ford here No more large UK Fords came here after the MK4 they were too hard to sell.
To be fair, they did this properly- it was trimmed at vdp own coachworks to the same standard used on the big Daimlers. Connolly leather seats, Wilton carpets, west of England cloth headlining and real walnut dash and trim. A typical buyer would be a retiree who’d had use of a company Jaguar and wouldn’t have anything as brash as a Ford. In the 60s a quality interior like that was usually the preserve of much more expensive machines like Bentleys, although a vdp 1100 cost as much as a much bigger Ford Zephyr so it wasn’t particularly cheap either.
When i was waiting to be drafted in late 1960’s, I was a low level British car mechanic. The higher levels all drove Minis. and when the MG 1100 was available, some bought in. They all jumped ship for the Datsun 510 2 door sedan. I motored on in my 1954 AH 1004.
You know what, I quite like these things! They remind me of an aristocrat’s snuff-box, the kind one would flourish in a gentlemanly sort of way!
That bareboned Morris 1100 had me thinking of a plain jane Chevy Biscayne to start, followed by the progression of Bel Air, Impala, and a Caprice to top it off.
I had an MG 1100 in the early ’70s – cost me all of 60 quid and my brother paid the enormous sum of £100 for a very smart VDP .
A skidding bus wrecked mine but my brother’s ran for years and they weren’t as unreliable or difficult to repair as some of the comments imply.
Salt on the roads killed them up here in Scotland.
Between August 1978-September 1979, Leyland’s South African operation (Leykor) offered a Vanden Plas Mini. It used the 1098cm3 A-Series engine, a four-speed manual transmission and drum brakes all round. Available only in metallic bronze with gold basket weave side-graphics (shades of brown seemed to stalk the 1970s), standard equipment included a folding sunroof, matt-black grille with chrome surround, tinted glass, twin chrome door mirrors, a chrome exhaust tip, mud-flaps and a dipping rear view mirror. The interior appointments weren’t up to the standard of the English VDPs but there was cashmere pure wool upholstery, a walnut veneer dashboard with twin glove boxes, a leather-bound steering wheel and mahogany cut-pile carpets. Apparently, the project was shut down when London got to hear about it.
Trying to decide if I like the Wolseley or the Rily better……
They’re all good looking but I seem to recall Land Crabs as not being reliable cars .
-Nate
My landcrab was not very reliable but I was a broke student and did not really know how to maintain it. In the end it was rust that did it in. Not designed for Canadian snow and salt. It was however wonderful in deep snow and had a very plush ride.
After its introduction downunder in 1964 (two years after UK model debut), our local ADO16 variant the Morris 1100 earned a ‘Car of the Year’ gong and briefly became Australia’s 2nd best selling car.
They were dynamically superior to any competitor and amazingly space efficient. An advanced ‘AP’ 4-speed auto followed, along with a more perky 1275cc “1100 S” version. In all, a very likeable small car, albeit increasingly, and often expensively, repair-prone as they aged. The beautifully trimmed Vanden Plas was later offered here, but alas very few were sold due to full importation resulting in VP’s being absurdly priced almost double the base Morris.
My family ran an 1100 for about four years as our 2nd car. It usurped a Goggomobile 300, and was itself later replaced by an early Honda Civic 1500 sedan of similar conception. I drove our little Morrie often and to me it seemed a likeable little car – comfortable seats, standard front disc brakes, particularly good handing & ride and, like all of BMC’s FWD cars, blessed with a very individualistic character.