Adventures In British Leyland Marketing: You Ain't Seen Nothing Like the MG Maestro Yet!
Even though I’ve never been in a Austin/MG Maestro, I feel fairly confident in stating that the Rover Group’s little front-drive compact was unexciting at best. Still, the advertising folks must have though (after 11 rounds of Singapore Slings down at the pub) we can make it look cute and sexy!
You decide. Bachmann-Turner Overdrive plus models in post-apocalyptic/crypto-punk outfits plus a general jittery sense of enforced silliness equals… big sales? Not really. The surreal touch of having the post-chick-consumption car say “BURP!” with a Mylar balloon poking out of the trunk adds something special, though.
You want happy silly instead of grim silly? Those ad hucksters should have gone to Japan for some education in making miserably underpowered small cars look fun. For example, pick just about any Starlet ad.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Actually the 4wd turbo starlet was a bit of a hot hatch in the day. Classic Toyota conservative tune, meant that if you found one you could wind the boost up and create your very own GLHS :) The rest of the car was crap tho..
I never thought the 1980s were cool. Honest. I never did. I never owned any of those clothes. Nothing in those colors. Never. And the hair. I never did that with my hair. If you have any photos of me in clothes that look like that with hair like that - that isn't me. And I would pay you some nice cash for the photo negatives.