25 Nov 04
The Allegro Owners' Club started as a result of a hoax letter in a classic car magazine in 1989 and naturally, it wasn't long before Colin became a very active member. It was from here on that the disease really took hold. The media latched on to the idea of the Allegro as a piece of '70s nostalgia, and the BBC even did a 20-minute TV programme on the car which featured the now Reverend Colin Corke as the 'mad Allegro-owning vicar'. Colin became a spokesman for the Allegro and even got to meet his hero Harris Mann, the car's hapless stylist.
"The thing about Harris Mann," says Colin, "is that he is such a genuinely pleasant person when you expect to find this jaded '70s style queen. And he doesn't defend himself over the Allegro." Colin is realistic about the Allegro's weaknesses but doesn't believe it was anything like as bad a car as is popularly thought. "The main problem with it was that you couldn't get out of the back seat easily, because the seat belt reel was just where your foot needed to be."
Colin even makes a convincing case for the square or, in Leyland-speak, Quartic steering wheel. "If the Quartic steering wheel had been on a Citroen, everybody would have said 'what a fantastic example of French eccentricity'. The idea was that you could see the instruments better, it was easier to get your legs under it when you got in, and it was like variable-rate power steering because you get more leverage at the corners when you are parking - and that actually works." All true in theory but critics - and buyers - hated it, including the police who converted all their Allegro panda cars to conventional wheels.
It was Colin's love of all things Allegro that drew him inexorably to the parish of Longbridge three years ago. Many of his congregation worked at 'The Austin' and built the Allegro. One of his regulars even built the first Allegro prototype. On his days off, Colin volunteers in the archive at Gaydon ("I'm like a pig in muck") or does what he can to move forward with the heroic 1750SS rebuild.
"The only real heart-searching has been the change of colour, because the car was white and I don't do white, so I've done it in one of the period metallics." Part of the glory of the car will be amazing turquoise paintwork, crowning glory to an orgy of '70s kitsch. "Just picture it," says Colin, warming to his favourite subject, "with the vinyl roof, a bright yellow PVC and Bri-nylon interior, a snuff-coloured dashboard, mock wood on bits of tin on top of the dashboard and the Quartic steering wheel with mock wood and an Austin logo on it... heaven."
