My two Princesses were the thirsty 2200 6 cylinder ones. The auto one used to do 16 mpg!!
The engine that was never meant to be.
As far as I recall, and it was many moons ago, the plan was - take one 4 cylinder E series engine - Maxi type, make a 1.3, a 1.5 and a 1.7. Add 2 cylinders to the smallest and the largest to get a 2.0 six and a 2.8 six. Just what the market wants. A 2.8 Princess is head on competition for the big Fords and the mighty Crestas. By the time you get round to all this, BMC became BL and ended up with things like the decent Triumph 6s and the very decent Rover engines. Never mind, a good company needs loads of different engines as an antidote to profitability. Then you spot that the 1.3 E series is actually less use than the 20 year old A series 1.3, so scrap it and along with it scrap the 2.0 six. Let's get on with the big one. Well, to fit a transverse engine and sit it on top of the gearbox and still have a bonnet you can see over, you need to scrunch it all up and not have too much water cooling between the cylinders, none seems a good start. Add a fairly spindly five bearing crank, try it out in some prototype Austin Kimberleys in Australia, fail miserably, sell a few turned round and used as N-S engines in an antipodean Marina then give up. Finally launch the one that does hang together, the 2.2, effectively a 6 pot short stroke Maxi. To keep that reliable, keep it on a fairly low state of tune such that a twin carb B series 1.8 like in the MGB would have been a better bet but you dare not admit to that. Never mind, it's time for the Arab world to want real money for its oil, 1973, OPEC and all so our thirsty underpowered 6 pot will be just the job to get us back to profit .........
