General Comments:
First of all I'm pretty picky, so as much as I love a lot of cars, I can always find several negative aspects of them. Despite my love for it, the TR Magna is no exception.
The TR Magna is extremely comfortable for its era and has a good-looking exterior to it.
It has awful handling characteristics. It understeers a lot and has terrible body-roll. A rear sway bar should fix most of the body-roll problem. If you have a lead foot for corners this car is not for you. With stock 14" wheels and no rear sway bar, the car struggles to find traction around corners at a slightly quicker speed.
The drivers position is fantastic. More comfortable than late model Commodores and Falcons in my opinion.
The turning circle is amongst the worst of any car its size. Being a front-wheel drive sedan and a relatively large car, its 12 metre turning circle can be annoying when manouvering, especially when parking or doing U-turns.
The car is very quiet in stock form and so is fantastic for long trips. Off-setting this is the engine's unwillingness to rev. It sounds like it is struggling over 3500 RPM and it whines considerably at such RPM. Installing a sports muffler like a Lukey LR2779 is a great way to create better flow, a nice note and downplay the sound of the whiney engine at higher revs.
The car has a lot of leg-room upfront and tall drivers in particular will find the TR magna a very comofortable car to drive in. The dash is quite appealing for its era and has a nice curve to it. Forget about the stock speakers though, you will definitely need aftermarket ones. On that note, however the TR Magna has a lot of audio potential. Due to its in-cabin shape it has great acoustics and several TR Magna owners have won awards for their efforts in car audio.
Like most cars of its age, the brakes aren't all that good, but they do the job. Being front-wheel drive, the car feels very stable and handles quite well in the wet. The car will do up to about 165km/h and feels surprisingly stable at high speeds.
The 2.6L carby engine is quite honestly, terrible performance-wise. The fuel consumption is on par with most 6 cylinder sedans and with an 85kw engine in an almost 1400kg car, it is obviously very unresponsive.
The car is reliable as ever. One of the only positive aspects of the 2.6L Astron II engine is it is extremely tough. These engines last a long time and can easily last over 300,000kms if maintained correctly. Parts are very cheap for TR Magnas so for the small number of repairs and maintenance required, it is almost always very cheap to fix or replace.
Having said all this, the TR Magna is an extremely good-value-for-money car. It you want a really comfortable, reliable, good-looking car and don't get care much about kilowatts and AWD-type handling this is a fantastic car for the price.
7th Jun 2006, 04:02
Step down from a Bentley to a $500 Magna? Boy, what bad luck.