Over the years I have written many Break Down Stories about, Triumph Dolomite Sprint’s, Mini’s, Triumph 2500’s and TR7’s but after seven years of owning the Marina (late 70's into the 80's).
I could not write a Break Down Story.
As it never failed to get me home, it did play up and give trouble, but it always got me home.
The Marina has a reputation for being an awful car.
Any book with a title like, ‘The worse cars ever made’ or ‘The greatest lemons ever sold’ will feature the Marina as a contender for the worse car ever made,
or just watch Top Gear and that reputation will be reinforced.
I should add that a number of Triumphs (TR7, Stag) feature in those sort of books.
But considering the treatment I dished out to my Marina I think that the reputation is not entirely deserved.
In the seventies and eighties I was a long haired hippy living an alternate life style out in the bush so the Marinalived a very hard life.
Besides it’s motorsport activities, I lived on a dirt road with the last km being a private road, well to say road is perhaps overstating it a bit, it was a log track with three water crossing (when it rained) and very rough.
I built my house with the Marina, for a very long period the box trailer was a permanent part of the car, loaded to the gunnels with sand, bricks, timber etc.
During a long dry spell again the box trailer was permanently connected to the Marinaas I needed to drive to my parents place each day to fill a 44 gallon drum with water.
During the seven years of owning the Marinait had many mechanical problems, collapsed front wheel bearing, collapsed rear wheel bearing, curtesy of all the mud and dust.
Metal fatigue cracks all over the place and many front shock absorber problems but, like I said it always got me home, it had spirit and determination.
During a period of unemployment when money was just about non-existent, the Marina blew a head gasket.
It blew between number two and three cylinders, but it keep going and I keep driving it, but after a week or so the battery and the starter motor called it a day,
so to get it going I would spray quick start down the carbies and push.
Now Grafton does not have any hills to speak off but one side street did have a slight downhill gradient, so I would park there and usually with the help of passer by’s, push start the Marina.
This went on for about six weeks until I fixed it.
But it got me home.
I was driving home one day and as I changed gear the gear stick became very vague, moving all over the place and there was some awful noises coming from the gearbox or engine,
but it was still going so I drove the twenty km’s home. With the gear stick moving all over the place I decided it was a gear box problem so I pulled the gear box out, but found nothing wrong.
In the process of crawling back under the Marina to have another look I grabbed hold of the fly wheel to pull myself under the car only to find the fly wheel moved,
so the motor came out and the sump off to find the crank shaft was broken. But it got me home.
While competing in the Grafton Rally one year the alternator bracket broke which meant the alternator was bouncing all over the place, it was still working good enough
for head lights but not driving lights so we continued.
The head gasket blew next but the engine was still running on about 2 ½ cylinders, so we continued on to the finish, all be it a bit late, around 1.00 or 2.00 in the morning.
But it got me home.
On the one and only time I drove to Sydney during the Marina years it would not start one day.
I was in the Eastern suburbs, so we push started it thinking that the battery was gone as the alternator light was not on.
Driving over the Harbour Bridge the music from the cassette player started to get very slow, so I turned it off.
Somewhere around Mosman I pushed the clutch in and the engine just stopped, there was not even enough power to light up the ignition lights.
As I lived without power the Marina had two batteries in it, one to power the car the other to power the house, neither battery could draw on the other,
so all I had to do was change the battery terminals from the cars battery to the house battery and the Marina was a goer again.
Enough to get me to where I was staying.
All in all when I look back at the treatment dished out to the Marina both in motorsport and in everyday use I don’t think they deserve their reputation.
Sure they were not the best engineered cars around but a lot of cars from that time were pretty ordinary.
Jim Pope
Pictures, As purchased, Coffs Harbour Rally and Kempsey Rally.
For more on the Marins rally years go www.yellowduckmotorsport click on Links.

Jim Pope 6th Jan 24
The first rally for the Marina was the 1979 Coffs Harbour Rally.
Colin Green was still my navigator.
The car had a roll cage, lights etc, but was basically standard.
Again a creek would play a part in our down fall.
Other than the car being a bit low things where going quite well until a deep creek crossing near Ulong, which is high in the hill above Coffs Harbour.
Like a lot of cars the Marina had a plastic fan which are known to bend when driving through water and tearing a hole in radiators.
So as we drove through the creek I was trying to keep the revs down but only succeeded in stalling it and well, the battery was flat from running all those lights.
We were stuck in the middle of a creek in the middle of no where in the middle of the night in the middle of winter again.
This section was used twice so we sat there for about three hours before the sweep car came through and jump started us.
Coffs Harbour Rally 1980.
An uneventful rally where every thing went well.
I had a new navigator, Cedric Green, from Grafton.
We finished 23rd and even though that was not last, it was the last of the runners who had not lost time due to some problem.
Jim Pope

Jim Pope 8th Jan
The Grafton Rally 1980.
A lot of work had been done to the Marina since the last rally, telescopic shock absorbers fitted to the front, extra leaf in the rear springs,
big alternator and the engine had been lifted in the engine bay for more ground clearance.
The first section was a daylight section in the Forest south of Grafton.
All seemed well until the transport section on the way back into Grafton.
The car started to vibrate and the gear stick was moving all over the place.
The gear box cross member had broken away.
My navigator, Cedric Green (a resourceful farmer) made up a new cross member which bolted to the gear box and was jammed between the torsion bars and the floor.
It made a lot of noise but it worked.
The only other problem was that I ran wide around a corner hitting a log in the long grass which flipped up and put a dent in the drivers door.
Another competitor had a problem that affected us.
They had a small off which must had broken a fuel line as by the time we got there the car was well and truly on fire.
We were unable to complete that section. We had finished, all be it very late, about two in the morning.
The Kempsey Rally 1981. This event was where we achieved out best ever result on merit, 12th outright.
From the start in Kempsey the rally headed south for a daylight section.
Things got of to a bad start with the car dropping a cylinder and we under steered off on one corner.
The miss turned out to be just a spark plug lead coming of.
The car went well for the rest of the event and it was a bit of a surprise to finish so well.
If only that spark plug lead had not fallen off.
We did have a problem with the brakes, with the rough roads and with the discs out of true the pads where being knocked off the discs.
The result being that there was no brakes on the first application.
May be that’s why we were so much quicker than usual!

Jim Pope 9th Jan
The Grafton Rally 1981.
Started in South Grafton and headed out on the road to Armidale to the start of the first section.
I thought to myself, ‘I have been here before’, and as I ran wide on a corner hitting a log in the long grass, I remembered.
That was the same log I hit a few years ago. Not much damage this time just a small dent in the sill.
I declared that before the next Grafton Rally I would take a chain saw to that log!
The service point was a Nana Glen which is about half way to Coffs Harbour where my father was acting as my service crew.
The section before the service point was a long down hill section that really suited the Marina.
About half down the mountain we started to smell the brakes and as we pulled up at the control a great cloud of smoke billowed from the front brakes.
The control official said they could see the disc glow red as we approached but the pedal never went away.
The alternator light was flickering on and of and on inspection at the service point we discovered that the alternator bracket was broken.
There was nothing that we could do about it so we would just have to live with it, that meant, no driving lights. Worse was yet to come, the car drooped a cylinder in the next transport section, which turned out to be a blown head gasket.
We finished but only just.
The Marina retired to the back yard for a long time after that.
The Grafton Rally 1984.
The Marina had been through a back to shell rebuild.
A five speed Celica gear box was fitted, the motor was rebuilt, it was resprayed (green) and dozens of fatigue crack had been welded up.
The event started with a spectator section at Mountain View Hillclimb track using the access roads as well as the hillclimb.
The hillclimb showed up the Marina’s lack of power but otherwise so far so good.
The car went well for the rest of the event and we finished in 12th place again.