This sketch was based on information which was anonymously leaked from within Leyland, by someone who we assume had seen the original P76 designs by Michelotti in Italy.
What happened to those designs was revealed a few years later by Bob Johnston, a director of Leyland Australia who explained why the P76 had bombed, along with Leyland’s Australian manufacturing operations.
“Michelotti sent out a quite decent design,” said Johnson, “but some of the [Australian] team decided that the only way to make a real competitor was to make a car with the biggest boot in the world. So they got this Michelotti design, which swept down quite nicely at the rear, and – I remember sitting in the boardroom watching this – they got some chalk and simply drew a new line up higher. That’s how the P76 was designed.”
The Wheels sketch shows a sleeker profile and what appears to be a larger car. The Leyland informant suggested that the P76 was around the same size as the VH series Valiants, with a similar wheelbase to that of the HQ Kingswood and XA Falcon.
The question remains: would this sexier version of the P76 have sold any better than the real thing, which was dogged by quality issues?
Scoop! Australia's new V8
In its June 1972 editon, Wheels magazine ran a mysterious ‘artist’s impression’ showing how Leyland Australia’s new V8 P76 project would look. If it bears only a passing resemblance to the actual cars that came off the assembly line a year later, that’s because this was still very much a work in progress.
This article appeared in Australia MUSCLE CAR Magazine Issue 72
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