Good news! The scrappage scheme is dead in the water....

[woolleyiain]

Proof that Americans have never been able to build cars....

 

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/ ... 86,00.html

 

Love the name though!

[brammy777]

that list must be one of the first i have ever seen of worst cars which doesnt seem to have EVERY single 70/80s BL product on it.Anyone ever read the book Lemon?The author appears to hate BL with a scathing passion.Which for someone who wrote for an australian newspaper when they were made, doesnt make much sense, surely they didnt even export them there?Im probably wrong......I really hope that Nissan Cherry i see every day in Old Basing doesnt get scrapped....

[Richard]

Lots of BL stuff in Australia. I think they got a version, mostly built in Australia, of pretty much every BL model we did, and a few more besides.

[brammy777]

thought id be wrong haha, but its typical BL comments in the book'allegros had a tendancy to pop out rear windows, poor reliability, electrics always failed, communist workforce' etc etc

[RedSparrow]

Another load of old toss. I guess they just do these things when they have space to fill. From the TR7 bit:

The thing had more short-circuits than a mixing board with a bong spilled on it

[Richard]

Now I think about it maybe Leyland's Australian wing had fizzled out by the mid 1970s. I only had one window pop out of an Allegro, and that was because I popped it out myself so I could carry a 305 tailgate. The electrics were pretty standard for the time and reliability was probably slightly above average.There was one Allegro myth, I can't remember which, that came about because a car magazine asked a mechanic about something. It later transpired that the mechanic thought they were talking about the ADO16.

[Justin Case]

There was one Allegro myth, I can't remember which, that came about because a car magazine asked a mechanic about something. It later transpired that the mechanic thought they were talking about the ADO16.

Wasn't that something to do with the torque on the hub nuts or a similar thing and if you tightened the allegro ones to ADO16 settings, you ended up with a lot of shredded hub

[mnde]

From the Wikipedia Allegro page:In his book, Crap Cars, writer Richard Porter says "the only bit of the Allegro they got even vaguely right was the rust-proofing". The Allegro placed second worst in his list, beaten only by the VW Beetle.[4]. Despite this, the Allegro picked up a reputation for rust problems during its life. This was probably due to association with many other cars of the period (both from BL and other manufacturers) which had poor rust proofing. An early edition of What Car? ran a feature on the then-new Allegro, including an interview with staff at a BL dealership, who were asked if any problems occurred with the car in service. They replied that the car suffered from rust problems to its rear subframe. However, the staff thought they were being asked about the 1100/1300 car, which had been out of production for five years. Nonetheless, the magazine went on to report on the 'Allegro's' non-existent rust problems, creating a serious image problem.

[Justin Case]

Thanks for the correct tale. I just remember my late father-in-law having some wheel bearing/ hub trouble on a secondhand Allegro, and the garage blaming the original lot for buggering it up by doing it up incorrectly.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

The Allegro was a pretty rust resistant car - they never fell to bits the way the Escorts used to.A lot of the Allegro myth is just fashionable bullshit. I hate the things, but they were not the terrible unreliable heap they were made out to be. I expect the early ones were shite, but by the time of the Allegro 2 they were pretty well sorted.Usual 2nd gear crunch, electric fans, the odd Hydragas unit and the 1750 liked a drop of oil.Maxis could rust pretty well, Marinas were about average and the Allegro/Princess were good on the whole.BL's biggest rust heap was probably the Series 2 XJ6 - fuck me, could those things rot!

[vicsmith]

Another load of old toss. I guess they just do these things when they have space to fill. From the TR7 bit:

The thing had more short-circuits than a mixing board with a bong spilled on it

This person used a dig at the TR7 as a springboard for an attempt to sound cool and down-with-the-kids by creating an analogy that contains a reference to drug-taking equipment. Why he is he not safely esconced within an iron maiden, or one of those giant cast iron pigs the Romans used to roast slaves inside back in the good old days, feeling the pain of a thousand swords and pleading for his life to be mercifully snuffed out?