1983 Austin Ambassador

I took these photographs at a classic car show in Hyde, Cheshire in October 2025.

It's a 1983 Auston Ambassador and has a 4-cylinder inline 1,994cc engine.

The note in the windscreen of the car reads as follows:

Austin Ambassador

 

The Ambassador is what ADO71,

the Austin Princess became in its final form.

The conversion to Ambassador was codenamed LM19 and cost just £19M.

Ambassador was a stop-gap model before LC10,

the Montego and Maestro were launched.

 

This was a mainstream model but only 44,000 examples were made,

between 1982 and 1984 and now to many peoples’ surprise, only 74 survive including

only 13 in Vanden Plas trim and only 17 in total are known to be on the road!

 

The advanced features of Harris Mann’s design include:-

crumple zones with a rigid passenger cell,

fold-away steering wheel to protect ribs in an accident,

front wheel drive for accuracy in all road conditions,

Hydragas suspension, linked front to rear giving legendary comfort,

a huge boot, masses of legroom, especially in the back, and wedge styling.

Over the Princess, the ambassador has bigger, improved Hydragas suspension units,

wider wheels, the dashboard is all new, there is an air dam at the front

to further reduce drag and it is a hatchback.

 

The decision not to build the Princess in the first place as a hatchback was because

BL wanted a saloon car, so as not to compete with its own Rover SD1.

 

Despite being ‘badged’ an Austin, Ambassadors were at Cowley, Oxford,

the former Morris factory where BMW Minis are built today.

 

Here is a very rare British car to be proud of.

 

A455 VUK Ambassador Vanden Plas