Junkyard Find: 1969 Austin 1800 "Landcrab"
The BMC ADO17, popularly known as the Landcrab, sold pretty well in Europe but was nearly unknown in North America. Not completely unknown, though; a few Landcrabs were sold in the United States, and one of them has just washed up in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard.
With the same 1800cc pushrod B engine as the MGB, the Landcrab wasn’t going to win any drag races with, say, Slant Six Plymouth Valiants with a couple of bad plug wires, but its front-wheel-drive layout gave it a very spacious interior for its small footprint.
This one has the look of a project car that sat in a California back yard for a quarter-century or so, but it still has plenty of parts to offer one of the handful of American Landcrab owners.
I know of just one running Landcrab on this continent, and that’s this Mazda V6-powered example, which Silversleeves Racing ran at the 2013 Pacific Northworst 24 Hours of LeMons race earlier this year. I’ll let them know there’s a parts car just 1,000 miles to the south!
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Man...if only she were in running shape! Ol' ADO17 has the distinction of being the last production car Sir Alec Issigonis designed. I dream of getting a nice one some day to have my Issigonis collection: Morris Minor, Austin Mini and a Morris 1600/1800.
A friends parents had one in what must have been the mid 80s. Never got a ride in it but they were pretty common as you would expect in Coventry at that time, you still very occasionally see them. I can remember a few random fact about them, Apparently the only passenger car with a greater torsional rigidity was a Merc. The dipsticks on early ones were wrongly calibrated. The later Australians models were restyled and named Austin Kimberley & Tasmin depending if they had the B-series or the E6. Oz also had a Ute version The B-series was tougher then the E6 lasting about 150,000 as opposed to the E6 100,000 Pininfarina did the styling Won the European car of the year award in 1965 i believe