All praise the AI Iegro

To mark the Austin Allegro turning 50, we drive the oldest surviving example. Does it really deserve its bad reputation?

- Richard Dredge

WAS there ever a car more reviled than the Austin Allegro? Perhaps its contemporary, the Marina, was just as unloved, but if there's one machine that you're guaranteed to see in any list of crap cars, it's the Austin Allegro.

British Leyland's saloon celebrated its 50th birthday last month, so we reckoned that this was the perfect chance to see if the car's terrible reputation is deserved, by trying out the oldest surviving example. This is a 1750SS that topped the range when the car was launched, but it was in production for barely a year, with just 2,000 or so made.

Colin Corke owns this 1750SS, which he bought unseen for £250 in 1998. He says: "Fellow Austin enthusiast Nick Bonthrone restored the Allegro with me, after his mum saw it for sale. Back then the car was white with an Ochre Yellow interior, but most importantly it carried chassis number 11, and it was commission number two. Knowing that the production cars were numbered from 101, that made this a pre-production car, and the second 1750SS ever made."

Club where the Allegro is truly cherished

THE man who owns the oldest Allegro, and two others including a rare Italian-built Innocenti Regent edition, is Rev Colin Corke, vicar of Longbridge in the West Midlands, where most Allegros were made.

Colin has boundless enthusiasm for the products of BL, and his encyclopaedic knowledge is helped by the fact that between 1981 and 1983, he was the star salesman for BL dealer Kenning in London.

Colin is now chairman of the Allegro Club International, a role that he has held twice before since the group was formed in 1990.

Colin says: "The club came about almost by accident. In 1989 a letter was published in a classic-car magazine, about a fictitious group for Allegro owners.