China Loves Britain, part 24344 – The Maestro MPV

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In our last ‘China Loves Britain‘ report, we talked about the Morris Ital, and how it found its new home in China long after it had ceased production. Today we turn our focus to the humble Austin Maestro van and its new Chinese clothes.

The Maestro and its van variant ceased production in 1994 as soon as BMW got their paws on Rover, the Maestro was one of the first vehicles to get the axe from the Rover line up, and rightly so. It was ancient compared to what the competitors were putting out at the time. But Auto Car magazine named the Maestro as one of the best motoring buys in 1993, they said it was old, but cheap – what more could a driver want?

The tooling, and IPR to the Maestro and Montego were sold to Etsong, a Chinese tobacco company that oddly have their fingers in many pies (real estate, football stadiums etc). They set up shop in their native Qingdao city, in Huangdao district. In late 2003, China Car Times passed that very factory and saw a car park full of Maestros and Maestro vans, it brought a tear to our glass eye to see so much automotive history in one place. From what we understand, the Etsong factory was pretty much low scale production with Etsong planning to sell the Maestro in 2000 0nwards as a ‘Qingdao Peoples Car‘. Obviously Qingdao people are a lot smarter than people give them credit for, they weren’t going to flock to buy a late 80′s car in the 00′s. Etsong quietly sold the factory on to First Automotive Works (FAW) where a Maestro was combined with Montego bits to create an odd Montego-Maestro hybrid, FAW then sold the factory on to SAIC-GM-Wuling. China Car Times is currently unsure whats coming out of that factory, although we will check next month when we need to go to Huangdao.

As well as churning out old Maestros, Etsong, in true British Leyland/Austin/Rover style churned out some ‘gimmick’ models to improve sales, namely, an MPV. The Maestro van had two holes cut in either side and hinge opening windows fitted. The rear ‘seats’ that turned the van into an MPV is just a simple bench, by bench we really do mean bench, for the rear seats didnt even have any headrests! The front seats flicked forward like any 3 door hatchbacks seats would to allow access to the rear seats. It has ample cargo space in the back, although there was no separation between cockpit and cargo area, so it might get a bit cold in winter months. We didnt see any seatbelts for the rear seat users, but seat belt use is not compulsory in China for passengers anyway (only drivers seem to get fined for not wearing seat belts in China), so why fit something thats not going to get used?

China Car Times spotted the below Maestro MPV parked up today, what could we do but take pictures of it?

China Car Times has learned that the engines in these motors were not actually of Maestro stock, but rather under license from Toyota! Wikipedia says that the Maestro Van is still in production – but seeing as the factory has been sold, and the model no for the van (CA6410) has been transfered over to the FAW made Daihatsu Xenia, were not so sure! We think the Maestro, and its various spin off have finally disappeared into motoring history, never (hopefully) to be resurrected again.

We wonder if the talking dashboard that Maestro and Montego were famous for was transferred over to the Chinese Maestro? We’d love to hear a car tell us ‘ai ya! – man yi dian, man yi dian‘