I FOUND Andrew Smith’s column on the Morris Marina interesting (Your Wheels in last Friday’s Oxford Mail).

The car in your picture is the Marina TC Jubilee, which comes as standard with ‘sodium’ tinted glass.

The Americans and Canadians didn’t escape either, they had the Austin Marina. Yes, Cowley churned out the Austin Marina for export to those countries.

In fact, the Jubilee TC in your picture used Austin Marina wheel styling.

I remember loads of right-hand drive but American-spec’ Austin Marinas being driven around by British Leyland staff most registered LFC....N or LJO...N.

Does anyone out there remember why?

The Australians had a six-cylinder version which was very front-heavy.

The Marina became the Ital and the last few years production was transferred to Longbridge.

The car was manufactured here from September 1982.

It is ironic that the last Morris-badged car was built in the Austin factory at Longbridge.

When production was finished the tooling was sold to China where the car was produced for a few years with a Chinese name.

The first Morris Marina was actually an export version of the frontwheel drive Morris 1100. Not a lot of people know that!

On the subject of the 1100, I remember seeing 1100 vans around the Cowley works in the 1960s, although the van was never put into full production.

While on the subject of the worst car ever, I expect the long-suffering Austin Allegro will be mentioned. But how many people will know that it was produced in Italy as the Innocenti Regent?

Nice column, thanks for the read.

STEVE PALMER, Mewburn Read, Banbury