STEVE KING 1974 LEYLAND P76
Nice-looking car, Steve. What was it that attracted you to the P76? Well, my brother has a couple of P76s, and when I started looking for another car to do up, he encouraged me to buy the old Leyland. He also reckoned it was better to do one up and save another car, rather than buying and rebuilding one that was already on the road. The other plus by doing it this way was that I could build it the way I wanted it to suit the way we were planning to use it. It’s become a bit of a family illness now, as, in addition to my brother owning two, my son now has one, and there is another one kicking around here on the farm as well.
That’s a lot in one family, all right, considering how few are still around! The P76 wasn’t the most common car, even back when they were new, with just on 18,000 of them made and most of those in Australia. Their claim to fame back in the day was being able to fit a 44-gallon drum in the boot, but how you were supposed to get a full one out of the back — weighing 220kg or more — I have no idea. They are a great car, but demand exceeded supply when new, and things got rushed. Despite being Wheels Car of the Year in 1973, the P76 got tagged as a lemon with poor build quality and reliability issues, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed 40 years on.
So, it wasn’t too flash when you got it? Not good at all, really. While it was, in theory, a ‘complete’ car, it was far from being good or intact. It was basically a bare bodyshell that had been stripped out, with everything shoved either inside the body or in the boot. Thankfully, most of it was there, but it needed a bit more than just reassembly to make it a car again. I knew it was more than I could do on my own, so I got Steve Beaumont from Classic Mini Spares in Te Puke involved, and all the rust was removed and replaced with new steel. After all the hard work we did, it made sense to rustproof and underseal it all to stop the cancer coming back, at least in my lifetime! Even with getting Steve on board, it still took a couple of years to get everything done. Aside from the wheels, it looks stock. Is that the case? It looks pretty stock, but there are a few subtle modifications that only a P76 purist would spot. While the bodywork was mostly standard, there were a few little tweaks — the boot spoiler being one of the obvious ones. The interior was all reupholstered to look stock but slightly improved. It’s kind of been restored but anything we could think of that could be done to upgrade it or make it a better car was done. The suspension got new springs, shocks, and bushes better than stock to improve the handling. We went through the diff, but, rather than leaving the stock brakes, we upgraded to discs. At the front it now has Wilwood calipers, which balance the rear discs and stop the car a whole lot better than the stock disc/drum set-up would have.
Did the drivetrain get the same treatment? It still has the original engine that it came with, but it has been well and truly gone through. They were based on the old Buick/Rover V8, but the Leyland engine had a taller deck height and [was] stroked to 4.4 litres. It is a great engine for making torque. It’s no hot rod engine, but it has been fully reconditioned with a healthy cam and a few other mods, too. I tried to keep the engine bay clean and stock looking, and, aside from the headers and air cleaner, it probably looks like it would have 40 odd years ago — it just goes a bit better. We also upgraded the factory three-speed auto for something a bit better — a European five-speed auto from an Audi or BMW, which makes it really nice to drive on the open road.
It’s a well-known car locally, so it obviously gets plenty of use. Yep, it gets used quite a bit, but it was built to be driven. It’s used regularly around the area, as well as the odd car show, and the annual P76 rally. We take it on road trips as a family, and it does the school run some days, too, running the kids up to the Hikutaia School. With the performance improvements to the engine and suspension, it drives great — not like a ’70s car at all. The latermodel gearbox helps, too. Top gear doesn’t kick in until around 100kph or so, as it drops the revs heaps for cruising and makes it really economical to drive on the big road trips. We love it and use it as much as we can.
Nice car, Steve. Thanks for your time.