CLASSIC ROAD TEST
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Turning the Allegro into a mini Rolls-Royce seemed a stretch too far even in the ’70s, so how does it stack up today?
Words and photography: Paul Wager
T
o be fair, it’s unlikely that when designing their current range Toyota benchmarked it against a 40-year old car from a long-defunct manufacturer which even when new was often ridiculed. But bouncing along a cratered farm track in our Vanden Plas 1750, I was struck by the fact that BL’s upmarket small car handles the potholes far
22 July 2022
better than the current state of the art from one of the world’s biggest car makers. My company-issue Toyota hybrid estate had bounced around dramatically even at walking pace, but the Allegro – sorry, Vanden Plas – stayed pretty level with its long wheel travel throwing the occupants around far less violently. Which little anecdote neatly sums up the retrospective view of the Allegro
that, well, you know it really wasn’t that bad. Or was it? The story of the Allegro has been well told before, so I’ll be brief: its place in the BL story is essentially that of a successor to the surprisingly successful ‘ADO16’ BMC 1100/1300 which had been a rare hit for BL, regularly occupying the top of the domestic sales charts. Initial thoughts had centred around a simple reskinning of the older car,
