Only the doors and inner structure carried over from the Princess, yet buyers still refused to call it a new car.
Median 60 hp across 118 similar cars
Lead trim: 1.7 O-series
Austin Ambassador1982–1984
- 0spots by members
- Unclaimednobody has spotted one yet
- 0sets it belongs to
Nobody in Burbles has spotted a Austin Ambassador yet. See one on the street, point the app at it, and the first card is yours — with your @handle permanently credited on this page.
FactOnly the doors and inner structure carried over from the Princess, yet buyers still refused to call it a new car.
The Austin Ambassador is a large family car introduced by the Austin Rover Group subsidiary of British Leyland in March 1982, a heavily updated version of the Princess, a saloon car that had lacked a hatchback, the car that "the Princess should have been right from the word go" according to one company manager. British Leyland changed the name to underscore the depths of the changes, with only the doors and inner structure carried over, but the wedge-shaped side profile betrayed the car's Princess origins, and buyers did not consider it a truly new model. The Princess had been out of production for four months by the time the Ambassador went on sale, and it bridged the gap between the smaller Morris Ital and the Rover SD1; production ran from March 1982 to March 1984, with 1.7 and 2.0-litre O-series engines.
Collectors Spotted in the Austin Ambassador Lineage
No member has published a public street spot of the Austin Ambassador yet — the First · Worldwide stamp is wide open.
Trims & Figures
2 published trims in the catalogue. A blank is a figure not recorded, not zero.
| Trim | Years | Engine | Power | Torque | 0–60 | Drive | Gearbox | MSRP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.7 O-series | 1982–1984 | 1.7 L Inline-4 | 82 hp | 97 lb-ft | — | — | — | — |
| 2.0 O-series | 1982–1984 | 2.0 L Inline-4 | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Owning one
We don’t estimate running costs for a car like this. What it costs depends on its condition, its specialist and how it is driven, and an average would mislead.
Owners’ builds
Nobody has claimed one yet.
Rivals
Same body, same money, other badges — tap any card to flip.
Japan was a minor market for the Swift: when it passed 2 million sales in 2011, about 39% were in India and 27% in Europe, against roughly 15% at home.
To adapt the Horizon for America, Chrysler bought nearly 100 Volkswagen Rabbits purely to reverse engineer them.
The Mk3 Focus RS's AWD system could send 100 percent of engine power to the rear wheels alone — built not in Ford's home country, but at the Saarlouis plant in Germany.
In June 2003, a Mégane II became the subject of the first ever live televised crash test with a real human driver at the wheel instead of a dummy — filmed by Top Gear.
This Wagon R redesigned its rear doors specifically to kill off the D-pillar — bigger doors with built-in quarter glass solved what earlier generations needed a whole extra pillar for.
The BX was the UK's best-selling diesel car for four years from 1987, and 2,315,739 were built in all.
Six months before Suzuki retired the Fronte name for good, the CN11S's 796cc version was already being built in China under a completely different name: the Anchi 6330.
Built to use up Chrysler-Simca's parts bin, it took its engine and gearbox straight from the front-wheel-drive Simca 1100 but mounted them amidships instead.