The Marina's public life did not get off to a good start. The rushed final stages of design and production, especially in regard to the suspension, meant that many of the press fleet cars had an incorrect front-suspension set-up, whereby there was no camber change when the car rolled, which in turn produced "almost heroic" levels of understeer: "Autocar" reported that the car they were driving ended up on the wrong side of the road when taking a sharp corner. This was a particular problem with the more powerful 1.8 and 1.8 TC cars, which were unfortunately the models the press were most likely to test, though the 1.3-litre models with their lighter engine did not suffer from the problem to the same extent. Early production Marinas were fitted with the original front suspension, although a different lower link-arm (trunnion) was fitted quite quickly. The best estimate is that about 30,000 cars with the original suspension were sold to the public: many, though not all, had their front suspension set-up retrospectively corrected by dealers and before September 1971, less than six months after launch, front-suspension "uprights" were being modified on the production line. The Marina was never intended, or designed, to have particularly exciting or sharp handling, but the early problems led to less-than-flattering road-test reports and it was undeniable that the Marina's handling always tended towards understeer, which for a rear-wheel-drive car was unusual, and towards body-roll. "What Car?" magazine, in a typical review, described the understeer as "noticeable", but called the car as a whole "unobtrusively well designed".