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The Austin Maxi is a medium-sized 5-door hatchback car that was produced by Austin in the 1970s. It was the first British five-speed five-door hatchback. ==History== The Maxi (code name ADO14) was the last car designed under the British Motor Corporation (BMC), and was the last production car designed by Alec Issigonis. Originally under BMC's plan for its new model range, which it had been developing since 1965, the Maxi was to have been called the "Austin 1500" and a saloon version the "Morris 1500" was to follow in the autumn.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The cars : Austin Maxi development story )〕 However, upon the merger of BMC and Leyland the new management abandoned the four-door saloon notchback and developed the Morris Marina instead. The new chairman Lord Stokes decided to also change the hatchback's name to the Maxi in homage to the Mini of 10 years earlier. All Maxis were produced at the Cowley plant in Oxford, although the E-Series engines were made at a brand new factory at Cofton Hackett in Longbridge. It was launched in Oporto, Portugal, on 24 April 1969 in a blaze of publicity, being one of the first cars to appear on the BBC's new car programme ''Wheelbase'', a forerunner to ''Top Gear''. It was also the first car after the creation of British Leyland. It followed the five-door hatchback pattern of the French-produced Renault 16, which was European Car of the Year in 1966 following its launch in 1965. Underneath the Maxi's practical and spacious bodyshell lay an all-new front wheel drive chassis, which was interlinked with an innovative five-speed manual transmission. The latter suffered from notorious problems with its control linkage, especially in early models which had a cable-operated linkage prone to cable stretch and other problems. These were noted by autotesters such as Vicar in ''Today's Driver'' (1969), who wrote: "This is probably a good idea that just needs a little bit of working on."〔''Today´s Driver'', February 1969〕〔From "Today´s Driver" February 1969. http://driventowrite.com/2013/11/01/1969-austin-maxi/〕 The later rod linkage was less problematic. All models were prone to problems brought on by the "cogs in the sump" layout, whereby the gearbox and engine shared a common oil supply. The clutch oil seal was also prone to leakage. Power came from a 1485 cc, later 1748 cc (from 1971), E-Series petrol engine which would later find its way into other British Leyland products such as the Austin Allegro. The 1750 and twin-carburettor 1750 HL models offered good performance by the standards of the day. Despite the new platform, the Maxi's styling suffered from the decision to save tooling costs by carrying over door panels from the Austin 1800 "Landcrab", which effectively made the Maxi resemble a scaled down version of that car – a design which was by then five years old, at a time when curvaceous "coke bottle" styling (typified by contemporaries such as the Ford Cortina Mk III and Hillman Avenger) was very much in vogue, contrasting sharply with the Maxi's very obvious mid-1960s looks. Another styling ambition for the car was a four-door saloon counterpart. A prototype was built, badged as a Morris, but it was not put into production, since the booted extension made the Maxi almost the same size as its larger 1800 sister. The Maxi featured a spacious interior, comfortable passenger accommodation, competitive pricing and reasonable running costs, but it was let down by a dull interior and poor build quality, although it was not as notorious for its downfalls as the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina were during the 1970s. One unusual feature of this car was that the rear seat back, as well as folding forward as in a conventional hatchback, also folded back. In combination with fully reclining front seats this gave satisfactory, if spartan, sleeping accommodation. Towards the end of the Maxi's life, in 1980, a lightly revised model was marketed as the "Maxi 2". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Austin Maxi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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