No they didn’t make a 2ltr but South Africa had a 2.6 6cyl version….. that must have been fun bit of info here
Rallying[edit]
In 1970 Donald Stokes ordered the BMC Competitions Department closed and disbanded. By the time the Marina appeared, it was becoming obvious that Stage Rallying was gaining popularity, and in early 1971 it was decided to use the new model in the November 1971 RAC rally. Luckily for BL, Special Tuning had a rally driver on its books by the name of Brian Culcheth and so with no team, no mechanics, no funding and initially no sponsorship a team of talented engineers developed a 1.3 coupé into a rally car, funded purely by sales of performance parts from Special Tuning.
Knowing that the 1.8-litre engine was too heavy for decent handling, they concentrated on the 1.3-litre engine and using Mini components got good horsepower figures from it; then they played a flanker to pen the field in the 1.3 classes. All rally teams used one particular course to test, so the car was fitted with a full-race 1.8 and blasted around the track in front of the Ford rally team – consequently they withdrew from the 1.3 class allowing the car to claim 1st in Class for the 1971 Rally.
Subsequently, the car was entered in 17 more national and international rallies up to 1975, either being placed or winning class honours in twelve of them, the others being crashes/failures. In South Africa, the local Leyland subsidiary also rallied the Marina for several years. These were serious machines, fitted originally with the Rover V8 and later with a 200-horsepower Triumph Dolomite Sprint engine. Leykor chose the heavier and less powerful Dolomite engine since more performance parts, including a close-ratio five-speed transmission, were available.[28] With the appearance of the SD1 this situation changed again, but the Dolomite engine was used into 1977 at least.