Note: Finding myself with a few spare minutes, I decided to adapt a post I had made on petrolblog.com into a self-contained piece. Granted, it’s a piece of nonsense, but what do you expect for nowt? Sheesh, some people…

Saying that I like 1980s cars isn’t likely to cause me to be the subject of mass ridicule. Well, no more than usual. However, admitting that I rather like the Austin Maestro may well have put paid to any hopes I had of gaining some semblance of street credibility. Ah well, you don’t miss what you never had, something that in my case is also linked to the Maestro. I’ll explain why in a moment, but first let’s consider the car itself. Yes, we do have to. Now stop blabbering and read on…

So what’s good about the Maestro? Objectively, not a great deal. It’s frumpy, stodgy and (save for the MG and MG Turbo models) about as adventurous as an evening spent watching re-runs of the Val Doonican Show. However, it has an organic quality that transcends scientific criteria: character. Buckets of it. The Maestro, you see, is redolent of a particular (better, in my view) place and time, now lost forever.

Let’s go back there and find out what role the Maestro played in my downfall. 

It was June 1983 and my 18 year old self was spending the the weekend with relatives in Stirling. Having spent an enjoyable Saturday afternoon larking about with my second cousin, David, in his black Allegro, thoughts turned to the evening’s entertainment. All debate on the matter ended when David decreed that we should hit one of the town’s top nightspots (not that it had much competition). But no sooner had I given my enthusiastic assent than he dropped a bombshell: the venue for our planned entertainment had a house rule that required male customers to wear a tie. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but I hadn’t taken a tie with me and the timing of said decree meant that I didn’t have time to nip out to the shops and buy one. What to do?

Ultimately, my options came down to either borrowing a tie from David (his collection of which ran to all of two examples) or from his father, a secondary school teacher. Having informed David that I would be grateful for the loan of his second tie, he beamed happily and presented me with an official Austin Maestro tie that had been issued to him by his employers. It says much about his father’s collection of neckwear that I ended up sticking with the Maestro tie in spite of the obvious potential for embarrassment. 

Gawd knows what the young ladies of Stirling would have made of my garb, for we never actually managed to gain entry to said top nightclub,  which turned out to be a bog-standard disco (or was it the other way round?). Once the bouncers had stopped laughing (which wasn’t the work of a moment), they politely invited us to sling our hooks. My recollection is a little hazy, but I seem to recall one of them muttering something about trying again when it was panto season. No reply was forthcoming from me. After all, what retort could I, a young man dressed like a chorus line member of an ultra low-budget production of Cavalleria Rusticana and sporting a ridiculous tie, hope to offer. In those few moments, my youthful self-esteem slipped away and I, like the Austin Maestro itself, was compelled to accept my place amongs the also-rans…

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