25 Nov 04
Thirty-one years after its launch the Austin Allegro has become the ultimate ironic classic car. It was Britain's equivalent to Ford's 1950s marketing disaster the Edsel, and became the symbol of everything that was wrong with British Leyland in the '70s. Billed as the volume-selling saviour of what was then still the world's fourth largest car manufacturer, this dumpy family saloon seemed to get off to a bad start from which it never really recovered. It leaked, its rear screen popped out if you jacked it up in the wrong place and, for some reason, it had a square steering wheel. What's more, if you believed everything you read in the Daily Mail, it was thrown together by Communists who, if they weren't on strike, were kipping on the nightshift. It seems eternally wrapped up in that grim '70s world of the three-day week and power cuts.
Yet the poor old Allegro has its adherents, none more passionate than the Reverend Colin Corke, Vicar of Longbridge - the very Birmingham parish which spawned this troubled yet oddly lovable car. He has owned over fifty of these cars in his time. "My old vicarage in Kent became an Allegro sanctuary," says Colin. Now, with space at more of a premium at his Longbridge vicarage, Colin has pruned his Allegro collection back to three: a restored 1300 poverty-spec model and two 1750SS versions. To the Allegro purist these are the most sought-after - the "canine gonads", according to Colin - and the rarest of the breed.
