THE KOREAN CONNECTION
		1972 saw the British Leyland Managing Director, George Turnbull finally relinquish his position after surviving the internal warfare that had raged since the merger of BMH and Leyland Motors. As a parting gift, he was allowed any car from the range and left with two Morris Marinas, one saloon and one coupe. Many were surprised at this, but it all became clear when George and the Marinas headed east to SouthKorea, where he'd been headhunted by an upstart motor manufacturer called Hyundai.
	Hyundai had been building rebadged Ford Cortinas under licence since 1967, but had now decided to branch out on their own and were looking for a small saloon to build. George turned up with the two Marinas to set up the operation from scratch. He had more of an understanding of Roy Haynes' vision of using standard chassis to produce varying cars than the Leyland management and realised that with further development the car had a real future. The styling, though, had to be done elsewhere and ITAL Design of Italy was employed.
		The engines were supplied by Mitsubishi Motors in 1200cc and 1400cc sizes and ITAL designed a neat three or five-door hatchback bodystyle to fit on the basic Marina-styled floorpan. The cars borrowed heavily from Cortina design with MacPherson strut front suspension but retained the rear leaf springs. The cars were first produced for the Korean market but soon were being exported to Mexico and Central America.
	The cars were announced in the UK soon after introduction but it took until 1982, and the Mk2 restyled version before Hyundai launched in the UK with the Pony and the Mk3-Cortina based Stellar saloons. Neither had any technical attraction to British buyers but they had superb build quality and were cheap enough to get people interested and were claimed by some members of the press to be the 'Korean Marina'. In a way, they were! The Mk2 looked very much like the Morris ITAL, but to a coupe outline. Nowadays, at least in the UK, they are nearly extinct but the legacy of Hyundai goes on, with technologically superb products still on the market. All because someone realised what Roy Haynes had developed.