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What IS it?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 8987
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Even though the badge on the rear says "Ferrari",
it's an Austin Allegro,Built from 1973-1983.

- Doug
 
Looking at my "Top Gear" book,here are some comments
about it:

- Doug


"The Austin 1100 looked pretty,drove well,and was mass-
ively popular.The British Leyland replaced it with the Allegro,
which was none of those things.What you're looking at here is
the car equivalent of running the whole length of the football
pitch and walloping one straight into the back of your own net".

"The 1970's wasn't a halcyon time for dynamic family cars,
but Alfa Romeo's Alfasud had already shown that a compact front-
whhel drive car could be a pleasure rather than a chore,and just
a year after the Allegro,the VW Golf pulled off the same trick,
which showed up BL's bulbous sloth as the missed opportunity it
was".

"Dad did,however,have one stout reason for buying it over
the Alfa or Vw:it was British.So our plucky lads at BL spent half
their time outside the factory chanting union slogans about fair-
play and softer loo rolls,but when father finally got his Allegro
at least he knew he hadn't defected to Johnny bloody Foreigner
with his dastardly habit of making a nice-looking car the people
actually wanted.BL used to do that too,of course.But then they
replaced it with this.Duh!"
 
Allegro, yes. But it is the Vanden Plas Allegro. Plush interior, wood trimmings and extra sound deadening. And, oh yes, that grille! A genuine, badge-engineered variant of the Austin Allegro.

No Morris, no MG or Riley badges ever found their way onto the Allegro, but the Vanden Plas crown certainly did.
 
25 years ago a friend gave me a lift in his Vanden Plas 1500 (it was never officially called Allegro). He loved it, and I can see why, it was compact but very comfortable, built to the old style, with wood and leather. Sadly they were generally unloved from day one, and still kick around the bottom of the price ladder now. I cannot agree about the model it replaced: the 1100/1300 never rang my bell at all. If that's "pretty" then I'm Renee Zellweger...
 
are you Renee Zellweger? She's pretty.

Quite a job of going incognito too. :banana:
 
And you thought she had a Prius...
 
Ya mean she's got an Incognito?!?!

wow.
 
Must be one of the "etceterinis" then...
 
I could have bought an Incognito for the same price as the Capri, but being 2000 miles away from all my friends and needing to make some new, I chose this red thing (left). No way I can be incognito in this!
 
We used to call the Allegro the "All Aggro" due to its aggravation level.
 
Horsemits was given a Dodge Aries by her mum a couple decades ago, thing was HATEFUL.

'smits wanted a set of replacement emblems to designate it as a Dodge Insipid. We sent it to the VA on a flatbed instead.
 
A happy day in my life. Many stories of that thing. It was a man hater. :smirk:
 
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