Fast Marina Magazine

If it's got an early "mouth" type front panel Andy. That's 72/ very early 73 as XDL was a 72 car and that had the later front panel.

I had a TC coupe when they were relatively new think it was L or M Reg was a dark Brown metallic seem to remember it was a very similar to be brown M reg in this thread and had Beige cloth trim. On the subject of none standard colours for employees I have a customer who is a retired Austin engineering apprentice who had a mini cooper in a none standard colour he says it was built like that for a customer evaluation clinic then sold off to him afterwards hope this hasn't confused the situation further

Hi Andy, good point about the employees cars, you are quite right, I have met several employees over the years that had cars built to order, so there is always the possibility that the car was painted in a future colour option, several people have pointed out to me that this car is clearly a genuine early car and a genuine TC, so chances are your car was Rheingold, i have looked into colour options on other models from the time and it appears the 1100/1300 was available in this colour in `72 on automatics, so it is a definite possibility mate, so my final thought(for what it is worth) is that your car probably left the factory as a Rheingold car with Ochre trim, and now i will disappear into a dark room and shut up

Oh I dunno, it's been an interesting (if inconclusive and somewhat erratic!) meander through the BL colour charts

Uncle Frank wrote:Hi Andy, good point about the employees cars, you are quite right, I have met several employees over the years that had cars built to order, so there is always the possibility that the car was painted in a future colour option, several people have pointed out to me that this car is clearly a genuine early car and a genuine TC, so chances are your car was Rheingold, i have looked into colour options on other models from the time and it appears the 1100/1300 was available in this colour in `72 on automatics, so it is a definite possibility mate, so my final thought(for what it is worth) is that your car probably left the factory as a Rheingold car with Ochre trim, and now i will disappear into a dark room and shut up

Ha Ha Thanks Frank, Yes I think I'm with you, Rhine Gold it must have been,

Thanks again for everyone's input, its good to have an issue to discuss and resolve!,

All the best Andy

Cheers Andy, either way you do have a very pretty car there now, nice job mate

david painter wrote:I had a TC coupe when they were relatively new think it was L or M Reg was a dark Brown metallic seem to remember it was a very similar to be brown M reg in this thread and had Beige cloth trim. On the subject of none standard colours for employees I have a customer who is a retired Austin engineering apprentice who had a mini cooper in a none standard colour he says it was built like that for a customer evaluation clinic then sold off to him afterwards hope this hasn't confused the situation further

Would make sense for "customer evaluation clinic" one-offs to be disposed off through the employee program. Presumably the paint companies worked with BL on future colour options, and once the marketing people had whittled down the list, supplied enough paint in the new colours for a handful of cars to be clinic'ed (with different interior colour combinations?). Wonder if there are any oddball combinations around, that never made it on to the "options" sheet? Purple with white interior, or white with orange interior, or silver with red interior?