A few months ago I got to drive a Leyland Princess
for the first time and two things happened that were entirely unexpected and made me very happy.
The first was that I discovered its secret weapon that makes it one of the most fun drives I've had
all year and the second is that halfway through my day with the Princess - and we had its Triumph TR7
stablemate along as well - by sheer coincidence we bumped into the man who designed both cars. I
know right, what are the chances? Hre's the story I've been curious to try a Princess for a long
time - no not like that - so when a friend offered me the chance to drive this one I was very keen.
Our excuse came when there was a BL Day being held in September of this year at Milton Keynes
which is a pleasant cross-country drive away from where the Princess lives. This particular car
is a 2200 HL which means it's got medium posh trim and the 2.2 litre straight six E-Series
engine. It looks fantastic in this coppery metallic colour which is called Reynard and for
my money is one of the two best colours you can get a Princess in, the other one being Jade Green.
Somewhere along the line a previous owner of this car, which is an HL, got a bad case of HLS envy
and screwed a load of lacquered veneer panels all over the dashboard and the door cards. Even
the very short-lived Wolseley version didn't get this level of wood applied to it and it sounds a
bit horrid but actually while I'd stop short of recommending that everybody do this it doesn't
look too bad. It kind of gets away with it, it's been quite neatly done even down
to this makeshift glove box where there ought to just be an open shelf. It certainly
doesn't detract from the overall experience. And the overall experience is one of gosh
what a lot of space. The transverse engine means that the bulkhead is well forward so
there's bags of leg room front and rear. Front wheel drive means the floor is nice and
flat too so the middle passenger on the back seat isn't viewing the world from between her
knees, at least not if you fold up this rather nice arm rest. The window line curves elegantly
downwards before it rises with the wedge-shaped profile which adds to the feeling of airiness
along with the slim pillars - less useful for rollover protection but it was a different age.
Mounting the engine sideways means that the bonnet line can be shorter and so it allows for a really
shallow rake to the windscreen. Look at it next to this Volvo 240 for example, the Princess’s screen
is set at a much shallower angle. The boot is very capacious too although the opening is a little bit
letterbox-like for bigger boxy bulky items which begs a question: with that sloping back why on
earth didn't Harris Mann design it as a hatchback? Well the answer of course is that
he did and here's how I know. Arriving at the BL day we parked the Princess
up alongside her royal sisters – a 1975 so very early Wolseley badged version and
a 1976 more basic Princess 1800. We were just standing there admiring the styling
when a gentleman who was standing next to us asked if we meant him and of course we
did for it was none other than Harris Mann himself by the most wonderful of coincidences.
Now although he was generous with his time and we had a really good conversation, I didn't actually
record an interview with him. It just wouldn't have been the right thing to do. He hadn't
come to do that, we hadn't arranged anything, I didn't have microphones set up and there were
much more official BL Day people patiently waiting to talk to him even though he was generous
with his time and we had a really good chat. But I did ask him about the hatchback thing
and what he said was that of course he did design it with a hatchback but the BL management
types felt that there was already one of those in the range with the Maxi and one of these
newfangled tailgate things was quite enough. As for Harris Mann's own taste in classic cars
he confessed to me that while he doesn't run a classic at the moment he does have a bit of a
thing for old Citroens and used to run a GS, so there you go, I didn't know that.
Series one Princesses like this one run either the 1.8 litre B series engine from the MGB
and Marina and stuff or this 2.2 litre E Series six. Both were carried over from the ADO17
Landcrab series that the Princess replaced in 1975. The six soldiered on in the Princess
2 from 1978 as well when the four-cylinder cars got replaced by the 1.7 litre or 2 litre versions
of the O-Series engine instead of the B. It's fed by two SU carburettors and sits sideways here in
the engine bay with epic amounts of space around it so you can get at stuff. The impression
of space is further added to by the fact that there are no strut towers on the front wheel
arches but more on the voodoo suspension later. Actually this 2200 engine was originally developed
by Leyland Australia for its Kimberley and Tasman cars. It's basically one and a half of the 1.5
litre E-Series engines used in the Maxi though BMC Australia pulled it out of their Morris 1500
and Nomad cars. I get quite a lot of viewers from Australia - well proportionally at least, I
don't get a lot of viewers from anywhere - so hi if that's you, thank you for watching and
thank you also for having a car culture that habitually added extra cylinders onto some quite
lacklustre four-cylinder BMC engines. Nice work. Power output is 110 bhp at 5250 rpm. 50 bhp per
litre is quite modest really if I'm honest but the long stroke means that it's actually more
focused on torque, which is a more respectable 125 lb ft at 3400 rpm, which is a little bit
higher than what you'd call lazy but still pretty usable. It pulls away really nicely and you
don't need to go down to first really for decent acceleration off the line, second will do in most
situations. I don't know what revs we were doing because one thing you don't get in a Princess is
a rev counter. We've got a very big clock here where a rev counter would naturally go but
certainly on this HL you get a clock rather than the rev counter. Not sure if the HLS is the
same, I think it is, I don't think Princesses and rev counters were ever found in the same space.
It does beg a question though: what if the 2.2 litre engine had been based on the 1750
four-cylinder E-Series instead of the 1500? Then it would have been a 2.6 and had much
stronger performance. In fact those heroes at Leyland Australia did build such an engine and
put it in their P76 and even a Morris Marina of all things for the local Australian market. It
generated about 10% more power but a thumping 165 lb ft of torque although they did put that
through the back wheels rather than the front in both of those cars so perhaps there would have
been epic amounts of steering wheel fight which is certainly absent on the 2.2 litre Princess.
But I also wonder whether having a 2.6 litre engine would have taken it too far into the
territory of the SD1. I asked Harris Mann about this too: he downplayed it though. Rover was
a separate division at the time if there were such discussions about the clash between the SD1
and the Princess then he wasn't party to them. Besides its roominess and avant-garde styling
the Princess had another pearl to her string and that's its Hydragas suspension. The way this works
is that instead of springs there's a pressurized sphere of nitrogen gas mounted at each wheel and
they’re connected fore and aft but not side to side, so that when the front wheels hit a bump
or go down a pothole there's a corresponding increase or decrease in pressure in the rear
sphere so it evens out the suspension load and smoothes the ride. And it works really well.
The suspension I think I'm really impressed by it's very smooth this isn't the best
road surface but it feels like it is. It corners beautifully flat there’s a fantastic
balance between ride comfort and road holding. It's a little bit like Citroen’s famous
hydropneumatic system but it's a lot simpler because there isn't a hydraulic pump that's
continuously maintaining the pressure - the system's pressurized once and just stays there, at
least in theory. It just floats over these speed bumps no problem at all you could fly over them
at full speed but obviously we won't because speed bumps are there for a reason but the Princess
deals with them with great grace. Of course when I say it's simple I speak as someone who doesn't own
one of these cars and doesn't have to worry about finding replacement spheres and Schrader valves
and pipes and all of the stuff that goes into it if you come out one morning and find that one side
of the car is a little bit lower than the other and your Hydragas has turned into Hydrasag.
The steering is delightful, it's pretty light and it's a big wheel this
thin rimmed and a little bit plasticky which is perhaps a bit of a shame but the actual feel
of the steering is really nice. It's very light but it's quite precise which lends itself
nicely to a fastish A road like this one. It turns in nicely no hint of understeer even
though it's front wheel drive just tracks around in a way that almost belies its size
because it's a fair-sized car this. So far so good but even I have to admit that there
are still a couple of peas under the Princess's mattress. The thing is while Ford's ruthlessly
effective PR team elbowed British Leyland out of The Professionals to give the Capri, the
Escort RS2000 and the Granada a macho image that's still current even 40 years later, BL’s
people could only manage to displace a Granada on that rather comfy slippers sitcom Terry
and June. This doesn't help. There is also the reputation for reliability and build quality
from the somewhat strike prone Leyland era. There's some validity to this for sure although
as ever the cars that survived today have had so much maintenance or were just lucky in the first
place that any real lemons out there have long since gone so you probably shouldn't be letting
that cloud your judgment of how desirable it is as a classic 40 odd years later. But image is in
the eye of the beholder and one person's princess maybe another person's ugly sister.
The Princess's other shortcoming and this is probably a bit more valid is the lack of a
fifth gear. It does sound a little bit revvy. I've already once I've only been going a few miles
but I've already once found myself reaching for a fifth gear that isn't there. It's not a
massive issue, the car will cruise comfortably at 70 which is all you're allowed to do in the
UK, right? It's happier on an A road. In fact I was very happy on an a road and that leads
me on to the second big surprise of the day. And this came on the way home when I discovered
that the secret to getting the best performance out of the Princess and finding the driver's
car that's hidden within is that the pedals are perfectly set up for heel and toe gear
changing, and I mean perfectly - it's one of the best cars for this that I've driven. Heel
and toe gear changing of course means that as you approach a bend on a fast A or B road you
can blip the throttle with the heel of your foot for a smooth downshift at the same time as
you're pressing the brake pedal with the ball of your foot while your left foot has got the
clutch down to change gear. What this means is that you can brake much later and harder and be
on the throttle much quicker to pull out of the bend as you pass the apex and have a much smoother
gear shift and keep the engine revs in that sweet spot around 3400 rpm for maximum torque. All of
which means that although the car isn't on paper outright fast you actually need to spend very
little time going slowly which makes for a much more rewarding drive. Because it's not a modern
car, I'm talking about it feeling fast and fun rather than outright stupid hooligan speeds and
frankly I was in a lot more danger of getting arrested for having a cheesy grin with intent than
I was for actually speeding or dangerous driving. If you're interested by the way this car is
potentially for sale. If you think you might want to make an offer then I'll put a link
in the description below, drop me a message and I can put you in contact with the owner.
I'd be pretty tempted myself I really like it but the usual reasons of not enough space and
too many cars mean it's not for me this time. I’ve always thought the Princess was a
handsome car, a truly distinctive design, and I like it all the more now that
I’ve not only driven one and driven it properly but also met the man who
created it. And if you’re a fan of 1970s wedge-shaped car designs then
you really need to watch this next.
