Engine Punk

My Allegro 1.3 Super in its element - summer time in the Cornish lanes Just over a year ago I chap called Steven (sorry, I don't know your second name) got in touch about my thoughts on the Austin Allegro. It seems I'm not the only one who thinks a fast one would be a Good Idea and a bit of a joke. His remarks were so encouraging I thought I'd share them. "Read your blog on the Allegro Equipe and felt compelled to write. "Like you, I've been looking for the Allegro SuperVroom TV ad. A crummy ad for a crummy car, what with its wobbly Hydragas suspension, floppy body-shell, square steering wheel, lumpen looks, and gutless, under-square engines. "Except that, like you, I can't help feeling that there was a decent car in the Aggro struggling to get out. "The first inkling I had of this was when Rover finally developed the car’s Hydragas suspension system as it always should have been developed – for the K...

It's mainstream and the accepted thing among motoring fascists to hate these cars so immediately I don't. And having sampled one for myself I can see the merits of an Austin Allegro The Austin Allegro has been voted the Worst Car Ever and I feel compelled to leap to defend this much misunderstood little car. Allegros are far too mainstream to normally feature as a Vintage Thing but if those of us who make the rules can't break 'em, who can? Aye, and there's the rub. Everybody's heard about Allegros, especially after this dubious accolade. They are famous for all the wrong reasons. But at least they are famous. Who ever remembers the Chrysler (later Talbot) Sunbeam? Or the Datsun Cherry? What about all those grey porridge Japanese cars like Datsun Cherrys and Mazda 626s that sank the likes of British Leyland? Okay, so they may have had some help from cars like the Marina, the Maxi and - yes - the Allegro but hundreds of thousands of these ostensibly better...

It failed the clear the section at Warleggan but raised many smiles. And a little outrage On Easter Saturday 1992 I was marshalling at Warleggan on Bodmin Moor, during an MCC Classic Trial, the Land’s End. This includes motorcycle combinations and trikes and these run in the motorbike classes that precede the car classes. We still had many bikes to pass through the observed section when through the woods and around the lower corner came a high revving Allegro. Oh no, we all thought, somebody’s skipped a few hills and is too far down the running order. However, as the car went by some of it seemed to be missing… This was my first acquaintance with the notorious Weeny Leaper. It failed the section, along with many others, and I had a quick chat with the driver and constructor, that affable automotive anarchist, Ed Holloway of Bexleyheath in Kent. Entered as Number 66 and running in the Class D for three wheelers, he told me that he had only completed the car that week and had ...