Top 10 worst British-made cars of all time | Top 10 - Car News Aug 2012

The British motor industry, sadly, is all but dead.

Sure, there are a few survivors -- MG, Aston Martin, Morgan -- but most are under foreign ownership, and the few that remain in British hands are prestige marques with limited production numbers.

So, why did the British motor industry go belly up? Many blame the trade unions, while some blame the succession of unhelpful governments who failed to invest in the industry; however, one of the key reasons has to be that about 90% of all the cars ever made in Britain were complete rubbish.

To give you a picture of just how many shocking cars for which the British motor industry was responsible, we've listed the ten worst British-made cars of all time.

A quick glance at the cars which just missed out on the list -- the Triumph Acclaim, the Austin Maxi, the Morris Ital -- will confirm your suspicions. These cars were TOO GOOD to make it into our top ten.

And if all this depresses you too much, remember to take a look at the ten best British cars ever made.

10. Austin Princess/Austin Ambassador The Princess embodied everything that was wrong with British Leyland in the 1970s, from the pointless badge-engineering to the Soviet-standard build quality; and quite what possessed anyone to buy one in the first place is anyone's guess. In 1982, BL tried to boost sales by tarting up the Princess and sticking some Ambassador badges on it, which was a bit like putting Ann Widdecombe in a G-string in an attempt to get her a job at Spearmint Rhino. Nobody was going to be fooled.
		9. Vauxhall Belmont In the 1980s, most of the major manufacturers attempted to peddle hastily cobbled-together booted versions of their popular hatchbacks -- the Orion, the Jetta and so on -- and the Belmont was possibly the worst example of this make-do-and-mend attitude towards car design. Apparently, the Belmont was, at one point, the most stolen car in Britain. God knows why.
8. Austin Maestro Austin really couldn't have the made the Maestro worse if they had tried. The awful engines dated all the way back to the 1950s, the build quality was appalling, the design was hideous, and British Leyland had the fantastic idea of fitting a talking dashboard which warned the driver if anything went wrong with the car. Which it did. All the time.
		7. Triumph TR7 The TR7's predecessor, the TR6, was a beautiful car, which makes it all the more baffling why Triumph decided to replace it with the TR7. Crap design, crap engine, crap build quality, crap car.
6. Rover 45 The introduction of the Rover 45 was the point at which it was clear Rover were doomed. Rather than designing a new car at great expense, Rover reheated the leftovers of the old 400 and, in doing so, gave it a truly gruesome facelift. The engine problems which plagued the 400, however, remained unfixed, begging the question: "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?"
		5. Triumph Stag The Stag was a good car... ruined. The original plan was to use Rover's V8 engine in the Stag but, in what must be one of the worst decisions ever made by humankind, Triumph decided to make its own V8 by welding two Dolomite engines together. Unfortunately, the engine that resulted was rubbish and gave the Stag a lifelong reputation for unreliability.
4. Austin Metro The Metro was billed as "a British car to take on the world." Unfortunately, it failed in this aim for two main reasons. One, it was an underdeveloped rot-box, and two, it was actually a worse car than the Mini, which preceded it by 21 years. BL, it seemed, were going backwards.
		3. Austin Allegro There is nothing we can say about this car that has not been said already.
2. Morris Marina Same as above. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet -- an insufficient number, we feel, to convey just how horrific the Marina was.
		1. Reliant Robin On the plus side, you could drive a Robin on a motorcycle licence; on the downside, there was a reason for this -- it wasn't really a car. The three-wheel set-up made it incredibly unstable through the corners, but this was fine, as being killed in a rollover accident was infinitely preferable to actually being seen driving one.