Maestro meet-up
Nick rewards his Austin Maestro for sailing through its MOT with a special outing to meet an exotic cousin
1989 AUSTIN MAESTRO 1.3 SPECAL
The world just got on with its normal business when the last Rover Maestros bounded from the Cowley production lines in 1994 rather than mourn a deeply outdated car that had never thrilled the souls of everyone in the first place. But, as the switches were flicked off for the last time, workers swear that they heard a ghostly: ‘Maestros will be back. Ha! Ha! Ha!’
And they were right, and here we are in the Cambridgeshire village of Thorney with Henleyetta, my much-loved and just re-mot’d Henley Blue Maestro, and a gleaming red example proudly boasting an X-prefix registration and the numbers ‘2001’ in its logbook.
Not surprisingly, villagers rushed from their homes to witness this momentous spectacle, holding their children aloft for a better view.
So how did this happen? The reason can be summed up in one word: Bulgaria.
Said country was looking for a national car and the Maestro and its tooling were the obvious choice. This was no minor venture; Rover established Rodacar, a joint venture using complete knock-down kits sent from Britain, the idea being that local content would gradually increase. Sadly, the factory closed in 1996 after just 2200 Maestros had been assembled. Dastardly deeds by Škoda and the Maestro being relatively pricey were blamed.
Briefly, British dealer Parkway Services snapped up 621 kits and built them up from 1997-2001, converting most of them to right-hand-drive.
The cars were registered as TETS (after Trans European Trading, a company closely associated with Parkway) and did not have Rover VIN numbers. They are generally known as ‘Ledbury Maestros’ after Parkway’s Herefordshire location. The TET cars were offered at just £4995, complete with a year’s warranty.
Henleyetta had sailed through its MOT and a local dealer, Peterborough Classic Cars, had a Ledbury Maestro in stock, so why not put the two cars together for a photo opportunity?
I must say that I was astonished just how well the 53,700-mile Ledbury drove; in fact I had a hard time believing that there was just a 1.3-litre A-series under the bonnet and not a 1.6. Want to know more about it? Turn to page 73 of this very issue for my Chasing Cars report on it.
What a car, and most certainly a piece of Maestro history, though I wasn’t really tempted to part-exchange Henleyetta, certainly not after nearly eight years of faithful service. (Ssh – actually I was really!)