It’s that time again! It’s time to redeem one of the cars from the thick 2005 tome of unfair automotive assessments, Craig Cheetham’s The World’s Worst Cars. This book, I maintain, is more accurately thought of a volume of interesting cars, not worst cars. And I’m going to prove that one by one, as I redeem each car! Every day! I’m only regretting starting this a little bit!
As you may recall, the method used to select what car to redeem from the book is highly sophisticated: I write a small BASIC program into my Commodore PET to pick a random number, which references a page number, and whatever car happens to be on that page is the car I redeem.
So, let’s see what car gets its redemption today!
Ah yes, 293! A prime number! And, more importantly, the number of this page in The World’s Worst Cars:
The MG Montego! Now, I’ll admit, I know this is only day three of me doing this, but this is the first time I got a car I’m genuinely unfamiliar with. So, I’ll be relying more on outside sources as opposed to my own experience, but these will be trustworthy sources, I promise. I mean, I think they will be.
The MG Montego entry in the book suggests that the MG Montego, fundamentally a badge-engineered version of the Austin Maestro/Montego, was a “sales and marketing disaster” and a “very cynical interpretation of the classic MG name.” These feel somewhat hyperbolic to me, and while I don’t want to begrudge any author the chance to really enjoy some nice, rich hyperbole, I’m not sure these assessments really paint an accurate picture of the car.
The MG Montego was released in April 1984, and was the high-performance version of the Austin Montego, which was British Leyland’s entry into the modern front-wheel drive mainstream car market. Keep in mind, at the time even this now-expected layout was somewhat novel among British mainstream sedan (fine, saloon) cars of the period, like the RWD Ford Sierra.
The Montegos – under whatever marque they were badged as – were well-designed, competent cars that unfortunately suffered from strikes and bad management and quality control problems and the whole spectrum of 1980s British maladies. So, there definitely were some reasons that could suggest why the Montego ended up on this nefarious list, but the more you look at the car itself, I think the less fair this assessment becomes.
Compared to other versions of the 2-liter inline-4 O-series engine in the Montego, the turbocharged MG version was quite potent, making a very-respectable-for-the-’80s 150 horsepower, where the normally-aspirated versions of the same engine made, with electronic fuel injection, a still decent 117 hp. These were actually decently quick – it did 0-60 in 8.5 seconds! That’s not bad!
I asked our resident, captive Briton, Adrian Clarke, about these cars, and he said the MG versions of these cars were the best ones, and that they had talking dashboards and he said “Once they started building them properly they were good cars. Not the best but they were popular as a Sierra/Cavalier competitor.” That’s maybe not glowing praise, but coming from Adrian, someone who loves a good kvetching about things more than most people enjoy delicious ice cream sundaes, that’s pretty damn good.
And, he was right about the talking dash! Look! Or, maybe, listen!
The MG Montego was a sort of technological showcase for British Leyland, featuring a very 80s-tastic digital dashboard:
Yes, you get more talking here, you’re a very lucky person! In addition to all the technology crammed inside the car, it was one of BL’s first cars to be designed using CAD software, too.
Styling-wise, it looked a lot like other ’80s smallish sedans, simple and unadorned, but with some nice crisp character lines and great details like those Mercedes-Benz-like ribbed taillights (complete with a heckblende?). Plus, I think the wraparound, three-pane rear window treatment is quite striking, too.
Oh, oh, oh, look what I was just shown! On the Austin version of the Montego at least – it may be on the MG version too, I’m not entirely sure – look what the dashboard featured:
Light up stalks are cool. ???? pic.twitter.com/vEVcuX98Ws
— Chloe Anastasia Phillips (@VHSChloe) July 31, 2024
Light-up stalks. Illuminated control stalks! I’m not certain I’ve seen another car that has these? There must have been some, but come on! A car with illuminated stalks (even if its just its badge-engineered sibling) can’t be in a Worst Cars Book!
So, let’s take a look at this thing through the Worst Car lens, because that’s why we’re here. Nearly all of the assessments of the MG Montego I’ve seen online have had generally the same message: once you got past the early quality control problems and all that crap, what you have is a fairly handsome and fun four-door sports sedan, with good technology for the era and a rewarding driving experience.
That may not be enough to put the MG Montego onto Mount Car Olympus, but it sure as hell doesn’t seem like the recipe for a “Worst Car.”
Craig, you’re wrong again! When will you learn?
I owned a Maestro (the hatchback) and I will continue to argue it’s a great car. The Montego’s primary problem was, in my opinion, that it looked a little boring. And yes, like ALL CARS from the late ’70s and early ’80s, particularly European cars, there were some early quality issues that, once worked out, were gone.
Extremely enjoyable little cars, and I’d definitely own a Maestro again in a heartbeat (I am regularly on the forums and looking).
My uncle had an Austin Montego, which he brought home when returning to live in Ireland from Wales. It was a H-reg, which I think puts it around 1990 (can’t say for sure since I don’t really understand how the UK registration system works). This would’ve been, maybe, around 1998. The car seemed a LOT older than just 8 years old, but I remember being impressed as a 14 year old passenger how comfortable the ride was, and it was very well equipped, even by 1998 standards. It was a bit of a surprise. The car was eventually stolen from outside my family home and found burnt out a few days later.
I’m sure that this car was low hanging fruit for this book because BL was such a dumpster fire in the late 70’s and 80s