ID:223, the big green sedan in the picture is the
Leyland P76 Targa Florio.
The Leyland P76 was designed & built in Australia back in 1973-74.
Around 18,000 cars were made. It had a 4.4 litre Rover alloy V8 mated to a 3-speed automatic.
Aussies that own them today find them a very comfortable good car to keep with pride.
Australia was once a captive consumer of small British 4-cylinder cars. Morris Minor and Austin A40 Farina abounded.
However the Aussies found that their longer distance driving and rougher roads called for bigger stronger cars than the small British front-wheel-drives.
A spacious car with a light alloy V8, to compete against offerings from Holden(GM), Valiant(Chrysler) and Ford.
But big heavy Brits like the Jaguar XJ6 were overpriced.
The Aussies wanted an economically priced, big car that would do all this.
A V8 in an enlarged British design would be too expensive to manufacture.
So a fresh new front-engined, rear wheel drive car was designed.
They came up with a square-stroke alloy Rover 4.4 litre V8 engine
fed by a Bendix Stromberg two-barrel carburettor.
The body design parameters were:
strength, simplicity, ease of maintenance and massive passenger and luggage space.
Michelotti did the wide, flat wedge styling with a low nose, deep hip-lines and a big, squared-off tail.
Body parts were kept few to add strength and save welding time and cost.
$21 million and 5 years and 500,000 miles of testing later, the Leyland P76 was ready for the showrooms.
The tail was a little out of character with the rest of the car.
But finish was bad. The doors fitted badly and leaked water.
The instrument cluster and centre console worked loose and squeaked.
Eventually, poor build quality of the cars sent the company broke.
And bad press delivered the coup de grâce killing off whatever sales there was.
Ram