Austin Princess

The Austin Princess (& The Austin Ambassador)

Bizarelly, this has become one of the very most popular pages of my website. Somebody somewhere Google's for Austin Princess at least once a day and ends up here! Weird huh? Well hello, welcome, and please click on 'Home' above to have a wander round my site before you go!

Is the Princess Britain's most unfairly forgotten cars?

The Princess was my Dad's first company car. He got a 1700HL model in a very bright red in 1980. At the time it seemed awesome. We nicknamed it "the big orange" and it did seem enormous compared to our Mini and Austin 1100! They were very striking in their day compared to the other cars on the road and looked futuristic and to most people ugly.

I got this from www.sniffpetrol.com :

Princess Brochure Images (early 80s)

For some reason, the Princess had a boot instead of a hatchback - later rectified in the re-modeled Ambassador - but it once caused my Dad to nearly crash the car. We were driving along when he exploded into a barrage of abuse about the bright red lorry that was driving right against our back bumper - he was watching it in the rear view mirror through the back window - it followed us for miles at high speed - then we all realised - it was the boot lid that had opened up...

The Austin Ambassador

The Austin Ambassador didn't last long... and to my mind had none of the style or character of the Princess on which it was obviously just a mild makeover of. Many aspects of it were obviously created as quickly and cheaply as possible, and much of the interior and some exterior components were just lifted from other BL Models. Below is the complete brochure - not sure which year, but it is probably 1983.