Goodbye Market Share: Allegro
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Allegro at rest: Launch photos taken in a suitably un-sexy location

hat is so very sad about this chapter of our story is that the Allegro had all the ingredients to be a world beater: It had Front wheel drive, it was the right size, it came at the right time, it was technically advanced and most of all, it was the car that replaced the 1100/1300 (ADO16); one of Britain's most-loved and most-popular post-war cars.

The development and conception of the Allegro, ADO67, was not seriously instigated until 1968. Today, such is the pace of progress, that it would be unthinkable to leave a car in production for Six Years before even thinking about its replacement. But, as explained earlier, in the 1960s BMC did exactly that. The 1100 was easily BMC's biggest selling car during that decade and had won the hearts of countless British, European and Colonial motorists – and as such, had become almost a national institution. During the Sixties, the 1100 fought against the Ford Cortina for sales supremacy in Britain – sales held up all the way through to 1972 – and it was against this background that plans for the ADO67 were drawn up.

In the climate of the Post-Leyland/BMC Merger days, Donald Stokes had come in to find that there were no future British Leyland models of any relevance in development. As a dynamic sales-driven Manager, he had quickly identified that the 1100/1300 range's star was in its descendancy and formulated a plan to replace ADO16 with separate, independently engineered Morris and Austin cars. This was in line with his plans for the two marques. His view was that market trends and conditions made this way of thinking essential in order to maintain market share.

As detailed elsewhere, the Marina was conceived and brought into production in the double-quick time of Eighteen Months. This fitted comfortably with the notion that Lord Stokes had planned the Morris range to comprise of conventional Rear Wheel Drive cars, designed to battle on level terms with Ford in the Company car market – something of a unique situation to Britain. Austin, on the other hand, was to be seen as the producer of technologically advanced, tour-de-force cars, conceived to be Front-driven and designed to battle the likes of Renault, Citroen or FIAT. The Maxi had started this trend; the Marina continued it and the Allegro (with its long development time) would be the culmination of this philosophy.

Paul Hughes design sketch: There's some Allegro in there somewhere in this drawing that was produced after the car was signed-off for production!

In the light of this, the Allegro's development progressed in what was seen as the logical way. Prior to the setting-up of a styling department at Longbridge, Harris Mann and Paul Hughes produced rival designs at Cowley for the ADO67. It was Mann's design that was chosen and he was to become the chief stylist of the car and he worked to the design brief instigated by Harry Webster that the Allegro would have “more durable styling”, not be a follower of fashion: avant-garde cars never followed fashion.

The initial designs for the Allegro showed a rakish car, curved and stylish. The need for the car to be built upon the 1100's underpinnings meant that one by one, design compromises were introduced. The scuttle line (height of the base of the windscreen) needed to be high in order to accommodate the A-Series engine and gear-in-sump arrangement.

What this meant was that the bonnet line needed to be raised, therefore, making the windscreen shallower and consequently, the side and rear windows also. The gentle curves of the initial design were also exaggerated as it was felt by the engineers that lessons learned in packaging and panel-strength from the ADO74-rivalling “Barrel-car” could be incorporated. The wheelbase was only slightly lengthened over the 1100, but overhangs (especially the front) were increased disproportionately in order to improve under-bonnet access and boot space, two major criticisms of the existing car.

The body design was finalised in 1970 at a cost to BLMC of £21 million and this final incarnation was accompanied by a sense of unease, certainly by Harris Mann, who felt that his design had been corrupted too much by the production-engineers. However, the Allegro's design was OK'ed for production by George Turnbull and it was felt (incorrectly as events have shown) that the offbeat styling was exactly what the Austin needed to be: a flag-bearer for the go-it-alone spirit that was prevalent in the company at the time.

On the engineering front, Alex Moulton had developed the new Hydragas suspension system that would replace Hydrolastic across the range. This system certainly was an improvement over Hydrolastic, which used Rubber as its springing medium, a more inconsistent material. Hydragas relied on Gas and Air spring units (Like Citroen), but didn't require a hydraulic actuator (Unlike Citroen), therefore, remaining a lower-cost option. Hydragas was also interconnected front to rear, which meant that roadholding was unaffected by the softer ride that this system afforded. In comparison with Hydrolastic suspension, the ride was significantly softer; the suspension units are smaller and were cheaper to produce, damping is more adjustable, depending on the application and noise insulation is far better. Who would have guessed that such was the soundness of this suspension system that it would still be in use over Twenty years later, in the MG-F sports car?

The range of engines would be widened to encompass the new E-series unit, as well as the venerable A-series. Like the Maxi, the Allegro would be available with both 1485cc and 1748cc versions of the E-series engine, running the same transmission-in-sump five-speed gearbox, employing the rod-linkage that had been introduced to replace the, frankly, appalling cable-operated linkage that hampered it in its early life.

The news that the Allegro was to employ the E-Series engine would have no doubt been greeted with sighs of relief from the workers at the new Cofton Hackett engine factory, a short walk up the road from the Longbridge factory itself. As explained previously, Cofton Hackett facility had been built in order to assemble the E and E6-Series engines, the new factory being deemed necessary in order to meet the engine requirements of the Maxi. Unfortunately, the Maxi missed its over-optimistic sales targets spectacularly and, as such Cofton Hackett was running very much under-capacity. The anticipated sales targets for the Allegro indicated that it would sell in larger numbers than the Austin-badged ADO16s and, therefore, the Allegro would easily make up for the shortfall caused by the Maxi's failure to sell in any great numbers.

As the Allegro neared production, its most infamous item was added: The Quartic steering wheel. Early in 1972, George Turnbull brought back to the Austin Drawing Office one of David Bache's more way-out design ideas, a steering “wheel” comprising of four curves joined together by Four straight lines, similar to the shape of a Television screen. He felt that it was just the thing to add to the Allegro, being (as he saw) avant-garde and hi-tech and that it complimented perfectly the image he wanted to project with the ADO67 design.

In the summer of 1972, senior technical writers from the British Motoring press were invited along to Longbridge to see the Allegro and importantly, offer their opinions on the new car. As this was pretty much at the end of the Allegro design process, there was very little that the assembled journalists could suggest to Austin in order to effect a great change to the car, but they were unanimous in their distaste for the Quartic steering wheel. To say that they were also under-whelmed by the ADO67's styling, would be an understatement, principle criticisms being that it lacked “style”. Austin Management had intended to win the approval of the Motoring Press by offering them an “inside track” on the development of the Allegro. Unfortunately, as a PR exercise this backfired, because even a small running change such as the removal and replacement of the Quartic steering wheel, as suggested by the assembled writers, was not implemented. In other words, the Press who attended felt that their suggestions had largely been ignored and any good will this event may have generated was lost.

After this, the Allegro was launched in May 1973 and in terms of market conditions, the new small family car could not have come at a better time. Maxi had failed to make an impact on the market; ADO16 sales were falling fast, (Morris versions having been discontinued to make way for the Marina, in 1971). The Cortina, once a rival to the ADO16, had grown significantly in size and the new Mark III was having its own teething troubles and so, the new car was launched with an air of optimism. This car, unlike the Marina had been developed thoroughly and at length and Austin had high hopes that the Allegro would be a great success.

Initial Road Tests were not unkind to the car, but it could not be ignored that the 1100 and 1300 Allegros were, model on model, Ten percent more expensive than the outgoing model and in terms of performance, the new car was also slower, due to its greater weight and aerodynamic frontal area. Personally, I found the models that I have driven to be uninspiring, but dig deeper into the Allegro's limited portfolio of abilities and it does possess a good chassis thanks to Alex Moulton, with remarkably high levels of grip. This is probably fortuitous because what it meant was that to make rapid progress in an Allegro (even the 1750 versions are not what you'd call quick) you needed to gain momentum and try not to lose it in the corners, by hanging on for dear life.

Criticisms were levelled at the lack of rear legroom (it was no better than the ADO16), weak performance and brakes on the A-Series models. The gearchange action in the E-Series version was (like the Maxi) vague and notchy (one wag likened it to stirring a bag of marbles with a knitting needle). The Quartic steering wheel was overlooked as a marketing gimmick (true) and the styling was politely consigned to the “make your own mind-up” school of thought.

Three grille treatments (L-R): 1500 and 1750, Super and Deluxe Versions.

Actually, the issue of the styling cannot be left at that. The looks of a car and the image that those looks convey are utmost in the eyes of any prospective purchaser – if a car looks right, faults can be overlooked, but if it looks wrong, as the Allegro so patently did, then no matter how worthy the car is, its appeal to its customer base is seriously undermined. Basically, whichever way you look at the Allegro, it is ugly; the nose is undefined and the grille/headlight treatment is so much narrower than the width of the car that it consigns to make it look over-inflated, especially from the front. The sides of the car, so convexly curved, serve to heighten the impression that the Allegro looks pregnant. Wheels that failed to fill the arches adding to the overall impression that here we had a blob of a car. I know that it is easy to criticise the styling of a car: looks are always subjective, but in terms of a mass-market car with serious sales ambitions, it is impossible to think of a post-war car so universally condemned on its styling alone.

What confounds this even more is that the 1100, as styled by Pininfarina had pre-empted fashion by almost a decade and cars such as the Volkswagen Golf and Alfa-Romeo Alfasud (both contemporaries of the Allegro) had shown that crisp, angular styling (as had the 1100) by a big-name Italian designer was what increasingly sophisticated European buyers wanted. The only thing to be said in favour of the Allegro's styling was that at least, it couldn't be mistaken for anything else on the road.

The Quartic steering wheel helped alienate customers further and although Austin quoted sound reasoning behind the choice of such an offbeat item, the truth was that people simply did not like it – it may have enabled unhindered visibility of the instruments, but unless you were sat in an Allegro 1750 Sports Special, there were never enough instruments to fill the binnacle anyway.

Her Majesty's Police force had placed an order for 657 Allegros to be used as Metropolitan and Panda cars at the time of the car's launch. Police 1100 and 1300 Allegros replaced the Morris Minor and in the role of Panda Cars were judged to be very successful, but it was noted with glee by the press that the Quartic wheels were being removed for Police use; It wasn't as if the Quartic wheel was bad, just that it didn't suit the Police way of driving (so it was explained by embarrassed officers). Thankfully, this butt of many jokes managed to last less than two years before being consigned to the gimmick bin where it belonged.

The Allegro range was soon to expand. The following year heralded the Estate version. If people thought that the saloon version was ugly, the Allegro Estate will have come as an even greater shock. The design of the Estate version conspired to look as though two styling committees had been responsible for the front and rear; all very interesting. A nice practical car though, flat load floor, large luggage area, but with the same tail sagging behaviour under load that affected the ADO16 estate. But if people thought they had seen the pinnacle of ugliness with the Allegro and its estate variation, they had not counted on the Vanden Plas 1500.

The ADO16 had various badge-engineered variations; Austin, Morris, Wolseley, MG and Vanden Plas – in modern terms this progression of models would now be handled with a range of variations, such as LX, GTi and a luxury version of a single model. But in the Sixties, BMC still comprised of Two basically autonomous dealer networks – each one wanting its own range of cars to sell. After the Leyland Merger of BMC and Leyland, Donald Stokes had identified that Badge Engineering had been a primary sin of BMC and although retaining separate Dealer networks and separate marques, he had begun the process of moving British Leyland away from this Practice. However, as with the ADO16, it was felt that there was a real need for a luxury version, so the coachbuilders Vanden Plas were employed to create a replacement for the Vanden Plas Princess 1300 – the posh ADO16.

In a nutshell, the Allegro was treated to the same style of makeover by Vanden Plas that ADO16 had received. A leather interior was added along with a wooden dashboard, a sprinkling of sumptuous interior fittings were added throughout (including polished walnut picnic trays being fitted to the front seat backs) and - oh yes! – the traditional Vanden Plas radiator grille. Whereas ADO16 had an attractive shape that lent itself perfectly to this type of badge engineering, the Allegro most certainly did not. So in 1974, against all better judgement, Leyland wheeled out the Vanden Plas 1500 (it was never called an Allegro).

What set the Vanden Plas apart from its lesser brethren was its even more appalling ugliness, quite a feat in itself! The combination of the original car's dumpy shape and grafting-on of that upright, snooty and decidedly incongruous chrome grille, conspired to make the car look like a Jaguar that had been left to melt in the oven. Interestingly, the Vanden Plas version also sported a round steering wheel – British Leyland, quite rightly saying that the Quartic wheel was something that this car's customers did not want. The result of this total lack of showroom appeal was that it was bought by only the loyal (and ageing) band of Vanden Plas customers, so sold in only a handful of numbers. Today, the Vanden Plas version is seen as a cult Allegro, most still surviving, its small group of enthusiastic owners keeping them going. It's easy to see the appeal of the Vanden Plas idea – load up a small car with Executive car levels of equipment, an idea that Rover successfully latched on to in the late 1980s, but the trouble with the Allegro was its poor execution and less-than-adequate starting point.

Problems that had become evident in the first couple of years of production resulted in a hasty facelift for the Allegro, the car being unoriginally known as the “Mark Two” model, launched in October 1975. The standard of the interior was upgraded, with more equipment being added and a shuffling of rear panels to release more rear passenger legroom and adjustments to the Hydragas suspension in order to improve the ride quality: stiffer suspension was used at the front in tandem with softer spring rates at the rear. Criticism of the Allegro's driveline “snatchiness” were also partially rectified by replacing the synthetic engine mounts with rubber ones and adding Two vertical dampers to the front mountings. The result of this first round of running changes was almost indistinguishable and the driving experience remained largely unaltered.

Still the Allegro failed to sell, but the major obstacle to sales was the styling and there was now no money left in British Leyland's coffers for a re-body. Crisis in the Corporation meant that Taxpayers money was being used sparingly and any meaningful development of the Allegro was further down the list priorities than it ought to have been. The Allegro continued to be sold throughout the Seventies and into the Eighties, its styling resolutely unchanged.

The “Mark Three” (Supervroom) model was launched to an apathetic public in 1979. Again, the interior was updated and an attempt was made to tidy-up the exterior styling, incorporating new lights, front and rear, plastic wheel trims, new radiator grilles, wraparound plastic bumpers and a natty new black plastic front air dam. Needless to say, sales continued their downward spiral and the Allegro shuffled off into obscurity in the buyers minds long before production ended at the end of 1982. It was replaced, unmourned, by the Maestro.

Interestingly, it was towards the end of the Allegro's production run that arguably the Two worst models in the Allegro range were introduced. The first was the Equipe model, which appeared in July 1979. This was a Two door version of the 1750HL, painted bright Silver with day-glo orange “Starsky & Hutch” stripes down the side and porous alloy wheels – guaranteed to leave you Four flat tyres in the morning. This was laughingly touted as a rival to the Alfasud Ti and the Golf GTi; needless to say, the Equipe never became a permanent addition to the Allegro range.

There was also the Allegro 1.0. This version came about as a result of model and engine rationalisation in the BL range following the launch of the Austin Metro. When the Mini Clubman was dropped, so was the 1100cc version of the A-Series Engine, so Austin decided to drop the One Litre version of the Engine into the Allegro's voluminous engine bay, rather than make the 1275cc version the base power unit. Why this was done is unfathomable, but needless to say, the end result was an absolute slug of a car, a price leader of a car that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.

So the Allegro bombed on the market. Very quickly, the Allegro became the focal point for the new national sport of “Leyland Bashing”, scare stories quickly circulated around the press about shortcomings in the Allegro. Most famously, the Allegro's lack of structural integrity led in extreme cases to the rear window popping out when the car was jacked-up. Of course this made good copy, but this only happened as a result of injudicious use of a trolley jack – engineers, in their panic, marked these areas underneath the Allegro with high visibility tape, but the damage had been done – and the story went national. Austin should have seen this coming – during filming for their launch advertisement in a quarry, one Allegro literally snapped in half when enthusiastically “yumped”. The media reported with glee every failing of the Allegro, so that very rapidly, people found that they had more and more reason not to buy this car. Not many cars reach the public level of awareness that the Allegro did, it even managed to pick up its own nickname: “All Aggro”

Fortunately for British Leyland, the failure of the Allegro on the British market was propped-up by the moderate success of the Marina, but it is true to say that the contraction of Leyland's market share coincided with the increased popularity of Imported cars and the rise of Ford in the UK. In Europe, however, the Allegro sunk without a trace. Innocenti, once happy partners of BMC in Italy, built their own Allegro, under licence (as they did with the Mini and ADO16), called the Regent, but found it so unsaleable to the car-loving Italians; they called it a day after barely Eighteen Months.

Had the Allegro been more appealing, been built properly and sold in the numbers expected by optimistic Leyland managers, the story might have been very different, but to succeed in doing that, Austin would have needed clearer and more focussed leadership. What actually happened was that they accepted that the ADO16 was a success and therefore, a bigger and more modern version of this car would continue in the same vain. Unfortunately for British Leyland, their go-it-alone approach to car design resulted in a finished car that was diametrically opposed to what the market actually wanted. The Allegro possessed no hatchback, because the 1100 didn't have one – but why is this so? It would appear that there was a blinkered approach to car-design in the Corporation at the time and no one was able (or prepared) to accept that between 1970 and 1975, there had been a wholesale shift in the buying patterns of car buyers. Small cars were getting more popular, but also more sophisticated and buyers demanded style, class and the practicality of a hatchback – The Allegro had none of these. So Austin's new car could not capitalise on the burgeoning popularity of this growing market sector, for the reasons stated above, but also it failed to compete in the more traditional centre ground of the market.

Part of the reason for this was the centre of gravity in the middle market had actually shifted upwards with the launch of the Cortina Mark III – a wholly larger car. Rather than being wrong in producing such a large car, Ford had successfully predicted the upward trend in the market, with rivals following their lead. Vauxhall Introduced the Cavalier in 1975 and the standard for this market was set, so the writing was on the wall for British Leyland, who were still without an effective middle market car.

Sadly for the British Motor Industry The Allegro was, therefore, the car that no one wanted – and because of this Austin's reputation for building advanced and interesting cars had been irrevocably damaged. Once people stopped buying Austins, the money stopped coming in and on the verge of Bankruptcy, the Government was forced to intervene by buying 99% of British Leyland's shares, thereby taking control of the beleaguered corporation.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see why the Allegro didn't sell – it was basically, a bad car - it is not so easy to say, however, whether its failure resulted in the Collapse of British Leyland as an Independent car company. Had it been a roaring success, then maybe the inevitable disintegration of British Leyland might have been postponed for a year or Two, but the cold hard facts are that the rot from the Sixties was too far advanced for this event not to have happened sooner or later. The Mini made little money, the ADO16 was never properly developed and was allowed to wither and die, the Maxi spectacularly missed its aimed market and more sadly, the dealer network was still a messy, shambling organization that had not changed since the BMC days and held too much influence over the Management of British Leyland.

The Allegro, in my eyes can't be held solely culpable, but it should surely be seen as a symbol of all that was wrong with British Leyland at the time and the reason why it collapsed as a viable concern. That this collapse happened at all is a major tragedy.

Copyright © 2002 Keith Adams