Allegro - a tale of build quality and limited budgets.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Taken from an AR Online article I was reading. I thought I'd share it here too. Interesting to hear the contrast between BL and Volkswagen at the time:

Former British Leyland man Michael Wattam recalls the process of the Austin Allegro’s productionisation…

And the reaction from the firm’s South African outpost when presented with the option of building the ‘new driving force from Austin’.

The original sketches (above) and clay for the Allegro looked pretty impressive, but things changed as the car made the transition from paper to production line. The production guys took a sharp intake of breath at every panel and slowly got the design modified so that it looked pretty awful, but possible (and cheaper) to make.

For instance, door swages which were designed in and needed to add strength and cut panel vibration down, were eliminated and the extremely bulbous door panels productionised. The reason was that the press tools on which the doors were to be pressed, were fairly light and could only cope with simple bends and not deep, clearly defined 3D draws.

The press dies themselves were made of a low-grade steel material which wore quite quickly and would have needed relatively frequent renewal. This applied throughout the car – all because there was no cash to buy heavy presses and quality, deep draw steel dies.

There was a huge amount of manual selectivity and compromise ‘fitting’ required of panels on production, with manually-applied spot welds at the absolute minimum. At the same time, Volkswagen Group was investing heavily in cutting-edge automated whole-body production.

The above and the inherent lack of torsional strength implied by a very lightly engineered and simplistic bodyshell design, led to all those problems with doors stuck when the car is jacked, and the terrible acoustics when driving, particularly with the most powerful E-Series motor.

I remember getting into a 1750 Sport and being appalled by the poor drive quality, drumming and general thrash. What a disappointment…

Finance Controller John Barber wasn’t that clever, either. Had he simply been a ‘car guy’ and not a fanatical bean-counter, he would have instantly cancelled the whole bloody thing and sat on his hands.

I was unfortunate enough to take pictures and tech details to Leyland South Africa in 1973, pretending to be all positive about the new car. Clearly the first question we were going to ask them is, ‘will you take this car in sufficient numbers and at a unit contribution, which would make assembly there a worthwhile exercise?’

One look at the first pictures of prototype cars (perversely all photographed very nicely in a muddy quarry?) and their decision was already made, no need for any viability study. In about 15 minutes, said they would not build it. They were on good terms with Stokes so, when I got home, I was given a right royal rollicking by senior Longbridge management – anybody who knew Harold Musgrove would understand the expletives used!

Other more ‘tied’ organisations such as BL Italia and BL France took a more pragmatic approach and asked for complete cars with unique low specs which they could sell in budget market niches, and when BL found getting cars registered in the UK profitably and in decent volume just wasn’t happening, acceded to their NSC requests for ‘specials’.

Nobody really wanted to know whether making Allegros was ever profitable – the marketing and financial systems used at the time were aided by sticking a wet finger out of the nearest window.

[HMC]

I also heard (could be pub lore) that there was a miscalculation about spring back with some of the panels in the presses and this translated into modifying some dimensions to account for this- which then caused a mismatch in proposed versus final dimensions/ curvature. I find that hard to believe personally.

[somewhatfoolish]

It ties in well with the general impression that while the rats weren't abandoning the sinking BL ship they weren't manning(ratting?) the pumps either.

[ETCHY]

The Allegro is a sad tale. It's a car i rather like and it certainly developed into a fairly decent car (after as usual too much fettling of it after launch as was sadly typical with BL..)

However compare it with a mk1 Golf and it shows that BL management really took their eye off the  ball. If they'd gone with the original sketches by Mann, if they'd put it together properly initially, if they'd added a hatchback etc etc, things might well have been different.

All rather sad.

 

[FakeConcern]

Ialways thought the later twin headlamp versions looked pretty good...

 

[Boycie]

I'm strange but I actually like the look of the 1750ss ..... I'll never get to drive one sadly 

[ETCHY]

I  always liked the Equipe, pity that wasn't in the range earlier.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

3 hours ago, ETCHY said:

It's a car i rather like

 

But is it a car you revere? 

[ETCHY]

14 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

But is it a car you revere? 

Erm perhaps not 😉

[Noel Tidybeard]

yes, a 1750HL series 2 or a 1.7HLS series 3 in metallic blue

[MJK 24]

18 hours ago, ETCHY said:

The Allegro is a sad tale. It's a car i rather like and it certainly developed into a fairly decent car (after as usual too much fettling of it after launch as was sadly typical with BL..)

However compare it with a mk1 Golf and it shows that BL management really took their eye off the  ball. If they'd gone with the original sketches by Mann, if they'd put it together properly initially, if they'd added a hatchback etc etc, things might well have been different.

All rather sad.

 

Were BL charging Golf money though?!

[ETCHY]

8 hours ago, MJK 24 said:

Were BL charging Golf money though?!

That's a fair point as the VW was I think more expensive but there was no shortage of folk to buy the "premium" VW product.. Being cheaper is also no excuse for the early ones often being thrown together (thus getting it an early bad rep').

It just wasn't the right car at the right time & at launch even compared unfavourably with the BMC 1300 it replaced.

As i say, I do like them & they're not a bad car at all, but BL did get it wrong & sadly it cost them  a lead in a highly competitive market segment.

[MJK 24]

31 minutes ago, ETCHY said:

That's a fair point as the VW was I think more expensive but there was no shortage of folk to buy the "premium" VW product.. Being cheaper is also no excuse for the early ones often being thrown together (thus getting it an early bad rep').

It just wasn't the right car at the right time & at launch even compared unfavourably with the BMC 1300 it replaced.

As i say, I do like them & they're not a bad car at all, but BL did get it wrong & sadly it cost them  a lead in a highly competitive market segment.

I think the car could and should have been much better.  I really don’t see the Golf as a competitor at all though.  The only common ground is their dimensions.

The German Deutschmark was very strong against the pound.  Combine that with the Golf being more ‘premium and advanced’ and I’d guess the price differential must have been 15 to 20%?

[HMC]

I’ve owned a 79 Vdp, and a 76 special.

Unlike quadratic pervs, my ultimate allegro would be a late final facelift HLS with the quad headlights, that final desperate limited budget tart up gives me the horn.

[Squire_Dawson]

The usual misinformed bullshit peddled by the sizeable anti-British portion of the population. Excellent cars, very well built, the only criticisms from an engineer's view are the unsuitability of the exhaust manifold joint arrangement for a transverse layout (which was the same on other cars from the stable), and sliding yoke calipers. The windows never fell out and the shell never flexed; just the usual bunch of cunts knocking anything British.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

30 minutes ago, Squire_Dawson said:

The usual misinformed bullshit peddled by the sizeable anti-British portion of the population. Excellent cars, very well built, the only criticisms from an engineer's view are the unsuitability of the exhaust manifold joint arrangement for a transverse layout (which was the same on other cars from the stable), and sliding yoke calipers. The windows never fell out and the shell never flexed; just the usual bunch of cunts knocking anything British.

Being well engineered and built didn’t make much difference to sales, nor did being technically advanced guarantee any advantage . As Ford demonstrated.

The ADO16 was always going to be a tough act to follow, but the Cortina had already taken the top sales spot before the Allegro came along. I think BL was being quite clever hedging their bets with the Marina and Allegro replacing the Austin and Morris 1100/1300. And it paid off if you combine the sales of the two they managed almost 2000000 of the things in 10 years or so and that against the backdrop of struggling to actually make any fucking cars at all due to lack of money, poor management and union unrest

When new Allegros were seen as a cut above Escorts, Vivas and Avengers, maybe because they seemed to stay smarter looking longer, less rust and multicoloured panels on older ones , from what I remember.

The fleets wanted super basic simple cheap to run shit and Ford in particular gave them that in the Escort. The 1300 Marina was considered Cortina size so wasn’t pushed as an Escort Popular rival even though a stripped out Marina would have done much better than the Allegro in that market.

The E Series cars always seemed a bit pointless , as apart from the 5 speed box the 1500 didn’t really offer much more than a 1275 A Series. I always thought a sporty twin carb 1275 with a 5 speed box would have sold pretty well, maybe as an MG.  The 1750 SS and Equipe might have looked the part and in theory being pretty nippy, but in reality were not very fast at all, I remember being disappointed reading an early road test , pretty sure it couldn’t break 100 mph.

These are just my misremembered ramblings of a car I’ve never owned , driven or even being a passenger in.

They certainly weren’t lacking in confidence for the Equippe, if the price is anything to go by ! Only £200 more would by you an RS2000 !

[AnthonyG]

A point about Golfs - in 1975 they may have been more expensive but they weren’t really seen as ‘premium’ in the sense they are now, just quite expensive for what they were, but that the extra was worth it if you cared about reliability and build quality.

These were the two main reasons people bought Beetles. VW’s build quality and reliability was a step up from any other ‘normal’ manufacturer and the paintwork was particularly noted as being very good indeed (paintwork would often go very flat after 2-3 years in the 1960s, particularly if a car lived outside). VW also had tremendous brand loyalty. It was basically a cheaper, smaller Volvo. 

Funnily enough the early Golfs (74-77) were not that well-built, and had poorer paintwork than the Beetle  - which could look tatty very quickly. I remember a friend’s mum had a 1975 ‘N’ one circa 1982/3 and it looked and sounded like a right old heap. 

I doubt that many people would have shopped an Allegro against a Golf - far more likely a Fiat, Datsun or Renault, if they looked at a ‘foreign’ make at all. 

Looking at period Which? magazines, Allegros were regarded as quite reliable - particularly the A series cars - and indeed better than average for rust resistance. They weren’t regarded as particularly brilliant to drive, but certainly perfectly OK.

Marina’s on the other hand -  Which? thought they were ‘orrible! 

[dollywobbler]

A fair point about rot. Pretty much everything built in the 1970s dissolved in about a fortnight, but the Allegro did stand up to it rather better than most. 

I think the Allegro is rather like the Metro. It could have been great if it had been just a few years earlier. By the time it reached the market, the market was moving on. Clueless management and disruptive unions didn't help matters, and nor did the fact that according to a production line chum of mine, EVERY bodyshell needed "dressing" (ie twatting with hammers) to make the doors fit properly.

[Bren]

My recollection of allegros is that you didn't actually see many tatty ones - the paint and chrome seemed to hold up.

This is in sharp contrast to the escorts hunters and the rest of the period - I can recall a lot of ropey examples near home and outside the school gates.

[inconsistant]

The Allegro Equipe is the car the Golf GTI could have been.

[Daviemck2006]

A lot of people saying the allegro was not a rust bucket. Well my one was. It was a 1975 car which my uncle had from new, and I inherited it in 1981 as my 1st car when I was 18. It had been kept garages all its life. The front wings were rotten, the scuttle panel was rotten and the floor needed welding at 7 years old. However it was only a 1.1 base and was actually quite fun. The only breakdown I had was a broken differential caused by trying a rolling back burn out. I do have a soft spot for them.

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

[chris667]

I spent a lot of time in/around those as a boy.

It's a shame, I didn't think it was a particularly ugly car. I merely think it reflected British manufacturing at the time - they simply didn't develop any of it enough. We could go into the politics section here but I don't want to do that, it gets a bit nasty.

Someone else mentioned the Metro - that was a great example. Most of it directly copied from a pioneering design.... from decades before. It was not a bad car in itself, but compared to a Mk1 Polo you can see how much better quality the German cars were.

[HMC]

Is it wishful to think what it had been given a hatch back and been carefully desnagged and updated to match up against the golf?
 

Purely on the back catalogue with this sort of car,  you would have to say there was more relevant  engineering experience behind the allegro than the golf, in the respective companies. 

Alas that didnt seem to count for much. And how much of it was about money? I read vw were close to bankruptcy just before the golf arrived to save them, so not only was BL in a tight spot as it was developed.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

13 hours ago, chris667 said:

I spent a lot of time in/around those as a boy.

It's a shame, I didn't think it was a particularly ugly car. I merely think it reflected British manufacturing at the time - they simply didn't develop any of it enough. We could go into the politics section here but I don't want to do that, it gets a bit nasty.

Someone else mentioned the Metro - that was a great example. Most of it directly copied from a pioneering design.... from decades before. It was not a bad car in itself, but compared to a Mk1 Polo you can see how much better quality the German cars were.

I always thought the Mk1 Metro was a great little car, particularly the MG. Even my boggo one litre early Mini Metro was fun to drive and handled well. It looks like the penny counters at Longbridge also heavily invested in the manufacturing setup for it too. I'd love a drive in an MG again - last time I did that was almost thirty years ago! 

 

[FakeConcern]

I posted this in the "Show us your estates" https://autoshite.com/topic/48098-show-us-your-estates/  thread, but might be of interest on here...

 

Quote

Allagro in Tahiti blue. I bought it as a stop gap from a wheeler dealer trader when selling my 1275gt . In those day you had an ad in Exchange & Mart often no pictures or a tiny black and white one. I met the chap in a petrol station in Kennington in the dark in the rain so I suppose I got what was coming to me! It was actually very clean with no rust, when I took off the fur fabric seat covers the vinyl seats were perfect and quite comfy. It was a one owner car with only about 56k miles showing (no idea if this was genuine), but the A series engine was totally fucked, it drank oil, the oil light would randomly come on while driving and after about a week of ownership, it started pouring out blue exhaust when started and whenever it felt like it. I sold it to a lad who intended to put a Cooper S engine in it so I didn't feel too bad!

This is the only picture I have of it...

[Timewaster]

My big question about the Allegro is, apart from not rusting faster than you could weld it back up again,  what did the Allegro do better than the 1100/1300 ADO16?

It didn't look better.

It didn't drive better.

It wasn't more spacious.

I doubt it was more economical.

Was it more reliable?

Hard to think of cars that weren't an improvement on their predecessor.

Mk5 Escorts and Mk3 Golfs probably..

Peugeot 307? (Or any '07  for that matter)

 

[Alusilber]

At least the Allegro looked a lot more modern than the ADO16 - unsurprisingly, since the latter hadn't really changed much since 1962!

[High Jetter]

41 minutes ago, Timewaster said:

My big question about the Allegro is, apart from not rusting faster than you could weld it back up again,  what did the Allegro do better than the 1100/1300 ADO16?

It didn't look better.

It didn't drive better.

It wasn't more spacious.

I doubt it was more economical.

Was it more reliable?

Hard to think of cars that weren't an improvement on their predecessor.

Mk5 Escorts and Mk3 Golfs probably..

Peugeot 307? (Or any '07  for that matter)

 

It was refined, Allegro means swift / faster in Italian (music). Quartic steering wheel? Choice of 1100, 1300, 1500 or 1750? Yes, it was crap. But it was British crap!

[warren t claim]

1 hour ago, FakeConcern said:

I posted this in the "Show us your estates" https://autoshite.com/topic/48098-show-us-your-estates/  thread, but might be of interest on here...

 

Smurf hearse!

I've no idea why but every Allegro I encountered back in the day had a loose rear seat squab for some reason?

[High Jetter]

Ok, incoming aggro tale when sober...