Leyland P76

[motorsportnerd]

Following Henk's request that we take some photos at the recent Eastern Creek Classic Display of common Australian cars that are unknown in Europe, I thought I'd start with one of the most maligned cars ever built in Australia - Leyland's P76.
Leyland was a subsidiary of the British Motors Corporation. BMC built a number of cars in Australia, including the Mini and the Austin 1800. The Leyland P76 was Leyland Australia's attempt to produce a car that could compete with the big three - Ford's Falcon, Holden's HQ and Chrysler's VJ. The P76 was released in 1973 and had the option of a 4.4 litre all alloy V8 developed from the Rover 3.5 V8 engine or a 2.6 litre six clyinder engine.
As Nota has mentioned, the car was quite light for such a big car - weighing in at 1206kg (thanks Nota) in V8 form. One of its features was that a 44 gallon drum could be fitted in the back.
Road tests from the period suggested that the P76 was a better driving car than its main rivals. With its all alloy V8 and lightweight construction techniques, it was certainly a more advanced car than the competition.
The P76 won Wheel's Car of the Year award in 1973 - but it must be pointed out that the award was for the V8 model only.
The P76 was only in construction from 1973 to 1975. Unfortunately during this time it developed a poor reputation. Problems included premature rust; poor panel fit and quality; and the V8 was prone to overheating in traffic. Warranty repairs took their toll on Leyland Australia's financial position. Also, the fact that the P76 was a large car introduced at a time of an energy crisis and was more costly than the oppostion at a time of high inflation and low consumer confidence, help seal the fate of both the P76 and Leyland. Leyland went out of business in Australia in 1975 and the last of the P76s was sold in Australia that year.
With the benefit of time, the P76 has attracted quite a following in the Australian club scene. It is recognised as a good idea that was poorly executed, unfortunately leading to the end of Leyland as a manufacturer in Australia.
An interesting website on the P76 can be found here.

Photo from the 2006 Eastern Creek Classic Display.

[motorsportnerd]

Leyland planned to introduce a two door version of the P76 in 1975. To be called the "Force-7" it was to be Leyland's competitor to the Ford Falcon Hardtop, Chrysler Charger and Holden Monaro. There were even plans to compete in the Bathurst 1000 with the car. Unfortunately, Leyland's financial woes meant that just 100 Force-7s were completed be production wound up and the car never officially went on sale. Most of the 100 completed cars were destroyed. There are estimates that 10 survive.
Whether the Force-7 would have been a success is debatable. The styling is rather square. It was to be introduced at a time when Ford, Holden and Chrysler were struggling to sell their two-door coupes. And the V8 engine was smaller than than the Falcon and Monaro - even if it was more sosphicated this might have been a marketing disadvantage.
The Force-7 remains a historical footnote in the tragedy that was the P76.

Photo 1 from the 2005 Muscle Car Masters at Eastern Creek; photo 2 from the 2006 Eastern Creek Classics.

[Revo]

Excellent thread, thank you!

[ScionDriver]

I have a book called Lemon's and this is featured!

[henk4]

Great, thanks, keep it coming...

[dracu777]

Great stuff. Were any of these Leyland models build for export?

[Pando]

Great stuff. Were any of these Leyland models build for export?

Yeah, but they broke down on the way to the boat. :drum roll:




Nevermind, I don't have the answer.

[nota]

^^ Focus intently on this steady glare of disapproval from this both past & present P-76 owner (jk Pando )

Nah, who am I kidding? There are so many jokes about these cars it's not funny any more .. almost! They were/are a byword for automotive failure and today can only be viewed with nostalgic derision, which in a perversely endearing 'P-76 way' comprises much of their current appeal

Leyland Australia released their new baby amidst much hope and hooplah in 1973. After serving up a series of dud 'big car' offerings for over two decades which ALL* failed to capture the interest of buyers, management thought that finally they had a Holden-beating winner on their hands .. or did they?

(*lest we forget the slow selling Morris Isis, then the Morris Marshall debacle, followed by a thing called Austin Freeway, and the Wolesely 24/80 flop, later still the dour 1965-on Austin 1800 'Grandma Special' which ended up being locally redesigned into those attractive yet terminally unreliable 1971-73 Austin Tasman/Kimberly twins < world's 1st traverse-mount 6cyl btw, and then onward and upwards towards Leyland's final saviour .. P-76!)

P-76 was a quite novel and clean-sheet design which only required about 30,000 units per annum for Leyland Oz to have their day in the sun and be profitable. This seemed quite a realistic sales target, given that their main competitor Holden managed to shift a whopping 500,000 of its HQ model alone, between 1971-74 ..

Sadly it was not to be. After numerous dramas - including production-line glitches and a damaging external industrial strike with sinister overtones that crippled V8 engine supply - the grand total of Leyland P-76 sales for 1973 amounted to a paltry 12,000 vehicles. Assisted with a big helping hand via the worldwide 'fuel crisis' of those times, by Christmas of 1973 it was basically all over for Leyland's new big V8 machine .. and indeed for Leyland Australia. Production output had ground down to a trickle, with both the P76 range and Leyland itself being widely ridiculed through media headlines and general perception into an ever-growing public relations disaster. 1974 sales struggled to add another 6,000 units to brave buyers, most of these vehicles being unsold leftovers from 1973, for a grand total of approximately 18,000 P-76s ever sold in Australia over its approx 18 month model lifespan .. so much for the once dreamy optimism held by this now-failed car company that faced impending bankrupcy

Oh well .. alas alack, best laid plans etc .. every man and his dog seems to have a P-76 story to tell. But nowdays only a very few of these motor cars remain in service, with the delapidated residue either strewn around the countryside in sheds and paddocks, or (by wide majority) already long recycled into Toyotas and such

Interestingly the P-76 was also assembled in New Zealand (its only export market) from Ausssie CKD kits, where it was retailed into 1975 by the Kiwis (albeit with small overall sales) and the model probably enjoyed a better public reputation over there than in its home country, along with decent successes in N-Z's tough production-car racing scene
_________ _ _

I could go on .. and on .. about this intruiging tale, a veritable industry blueprint of how to lose tons of money in a very short time. But Motorsportnerd has provided a solid overview of the whole sordid mess that was .. P-76, the Australian Edsel

Some of my previous P-76 related posts:
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/forum...0&postcount=22
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/forum...2&postcount=51

For what it's worth; my first P was a green '74 Super V8 (mid range) with the 4 speed manual (ex Federal Police Highway Patrol) while I've owned this white P-76 Executive V8 auto (luxury model) for yonks. It's one of the first ever built - early ones were the best btw - with a mere 155,000kms travelled, but had only recently exhumed it from six years of storage when these pics were taken .. so excuse the dust!

[henk4]

Great Stuff, what surprises me is how they got 4.4 liter out of the Buick/Rover engine, I thought the best you could get was about 3.9 litre

[Cyco]

Some more photos of the Force 7 V at Eastern Creek

[dracu777]

Some more photos of the Force 7 V at Eastern Creek

Great info guys. Any idea where the Force 7V name came from?

[pimento]

I read somewhere that the P76 was thought to be a fore-runner to a new large Rover project that never came to light. I'll try and find the article...

Ahh: http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/p76p8sd1f.htm

Interesting, what? A 4.4l SD1 woulda been nice as an uprated sports model. I used to have an SD1 (well, australian 3500SE series 2), it was great... when it was running.

[motorsportnerd]

Interestingly the P-76 was also assembled in New Zealand (its only export market) from Ausssie CKD kits, where it was retailed into 1975 by the Kiwis (albeit with small overall sales) and the model probably enjoyed a better public reputation over there than in its home country, along with decent successes in N-Z's tough production-car racing scene

Thanks, Nota. I knew our resident expert on Aussie cars would be able to add some great information to this thread .
We discussed the other day whether the P76 continued to be assembled in NZ for a couple of years after production stopped in Australia. I have a book at home on New Zealand's car assembly history, and it stated that production of the P76 stopped in both Australia and NZ at the end of 1974.
There was a question earlier in the thread about P76 exports. Some P76s were exported to New Zealand, and one or two made it to the UK as BMC owned cars. However, as alluded to above, the P76 was also assembled in NZ in Completely Knocked Down (CKD) form.

[pimento]

They were looking at exporting them to the UK, apparently.

LEYLAND AUSTRALIA hopes to sell more than 5000 Executive models of the P76 in Britain! The car has just been launched by a combined Leyland Australia-British Leyland team at a price close to $7000. While this price may sound excessive to Australians, it is close to the mark already established by other similar-sized imports such as the Australian Chrysler, Ford Falcon and Fairlane, Rambler and others. English motor writers regard it as a competitive product with these cars and other imports like the Opel Commodore and its European kin.

http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/p76ukf.htm

[blackhonda]

Didn't Leyland produce a version of the P76 called the Targa Florio (after the race)? Now my memory is sketchy here, but if I recall correctly, an Australian crew in a long distance rally (London-Sydney?) won a stage and Leyland commemorated the victory with the Targa Floria model. I think they were all blue and had very attractive alloy wheels specially cast. The P76, had it had better quality control, would in all probability have been a better car than it's Ford,Chrysler and Holden competitors (not that they set a very high benchmark). As an aside, there is a guy here in Queensland that hillclimbs one, cut-down into a two door by taking out the back doors and taking out about 6 inches laterally from the car. It did use the 4.4l engine originally, but the last time I saw it, it was running a Lexus V8.