Tony is the main man! He puts Clarkson & Co to shame. Straightforward, no bs or stupid antics, car reviews. Sadly TB has passed on and we are left with Flintoff & Co.
Great TV broadcast. Outdoor TV broadcasts were quite unusual in 1973, 99% were shot with poor quality film. The colors are quite vivid in this video and there ia a real "live" feel to it. Impressive for a 50 year old footage!
I am still very curieus how much more resolution there is on the Quad-tape. This seems to be captured on a simple capture-USB right of the monitor output of the VTR. I think a real 50 frame interlaced capture on 576i is probably a step up.
Prophetic words about the future 'front wheel drive, front-engined mini-car...' we came to know as the Golf. The Allegro's replacement, the Maestro, would end up using the Golf's gearbox because BL lacked the means to develop one.
Yes - whát a load of BS! The Passat looks at least 10 years more advanced than the BL product, from design to layout and size. Actually the Allegro should have been compared to the ¹st Gen. POLO. The Passat is in the Princess and Marina size class.
@@paulyflyer8154 Sorry about the confusion, but I was thinking about the UK Ford Corsair, which was basically a Mk1 Cortina with a more upmarket body on it.
My dad bought a Passat LS estate in 1975 when I was 11. Spent hours in the back of that looking out at all of the other cars on the road building a fascination of cars. Always preferred the foreign motors such as the Passat, Renault 16, Alfasud, the weird rotary Mazdas etc etc etc to the staid Marinas, Triumphs, Allegros and Maxis that were built in the U.K. Those early car memories stay with you and shape you forever.
This still looks so so modern! As if it was recorded last week or so. Unbelievably it was 48 years ago. 48 years before 1973 would be 1925! that is crazy. Way on the other side of World War Two. If they had made such a car review show it would look a lot more 'dated' (in fact it was before the era of Television!)
Yeah, I've noticed that with a lot of the Thames early/mid 70s car programmes, it's kind of uncanny the way they look and sound so fresh after so many decades. Even the music from that era (the good stuff like David Bowie etc) still sounds great today. I guess they were using video tape and not film for OB recordings by this point? It might account for the 'immediacy' of the images?
@@liminal-m3g Sports coverage aside,yes Thames , LWT & Yorkshire were using VT a lot on dramas, sitcoms and factual programmes even in outside location work like this, way before the BBC & more regional stations .even black & white programmes 1968 to circa1971 . These 3 companies as well as Granada have a proper archives only the BBC could dream of. Still it looks as if the Drive in Archives are only partially in tact, As the show ran from 1971 to 79.
@@keithe8449 though popular cars from 1973 particularly UK , some smaller Japanese & a few continental made cars were still sold with cross-ply tyres, dynamos,drum front brakes , single braking circuit , non collapsible steering column, non laminated windscreens & lack of heated back window.
@@gertvanderhorst2890 Didn't some later Type 3's have it a couple of years earlier? 1967 or 8 if memory serves, or was that a different system? My parent's model, from 1976, didn't rust and was apparently the only one in history that didn't. It wasn't a reliable car, but rust wasn't an issue.
If you see Harris Mann's original drawings of the proposed Allegro the look is very sleek and attractive. However, this was in the British Leyland days, and they seemed to have had a deep hatred of the motoring public, so, they spoiled the design totally. They gave it the appearance of a cartoon pig bursting for a shit. It wouldn't have been so bad if the berks in Longbridge could have nailed the thing together properly.
@@phhu7554 True. And also the heater matrix which was very deep. Both the E series engine and the heater system compromised the original sleek design of Harris Mann, hence the bulbus and pig like shape.
What a great clip seeing Tony Bastable talking about the cars of the day. Its so sad that he died young. OMG The Austin Allegro and a choice of 4 ENGINES!!!! Under the bonnet when a MAN could TINKER with it Its all diagnostics now and in the next 10 years no COMBUSION ENGINES - ALL ELECTRIC
So now I see where the C8 Corvette interior designers got their inspiration from for the steering wheel. And as others have commented, shocking to see computer-based diagnostics available on an early-1970s car. Google says VW first introduced this technology in 1969!
It wasn't that big a deal as it only measured dwell angle of the contacts ( which by the late 70s were getting obsolete on popular cars) Charging rate,& possibly a timing sensor reading. Both Chrysler UK & the Rover SD1 had the same a few years later.
I can smell the vinyl seats and memories of 3rd degree burns off the vinyl seats on sunny days. The smell of the little ashtrays built into the side panels full of cigarette butt's. The smell of 3 star petroleum and a having my lungs pumped full of lead. Shit times best forgotten. 👍
Yes , mechanically speaking the 1100 &1300 Allegro were (apart from instruments, suspension, Hydrolastic to Hydrogas & that steering wheel ) similar to it's predecessor the far superior 1962 to '74 BMC1100/1300.& It's many derivatives!
My Dad had a '79 Passat, which was in shit brown colour unfortunately with a biscuit colour interior. It was quite a revelation and leap forward mechanically from his previous motor, which was an air cooled Volkswagen fastback. The Passat had a hatch and the 1.6 engine which put out 75 hp, so it would have been nippy enough in its day too, as it probably didn't weigh much. It had efi which made a distinctive whirring noise on start up, I can still hear it now in my minds ear!
our 1979 Passat GLS, 5 doors....been 925kg in weight.....my now Hyundai i10 is over 1000kg.. the Passat been quiet fast with its 75hp....you could prove it here, on the Autobahn! its survived over 12 years!
I wonder why they compared these two cars they're in two different classes. Volkswagen came up with the Golf a year later in 1974 and competed against the Allegro whilst the Passat against the Morris Marina.
You've answered your own question, golf didn't exist at this point, and apart from the beetle, the Passat was the smallest VW, so bang in competition with the allegro. Passat only moved up a class when the golf arrived
@@nkt1 Primitive yes, but the same class as what the Gold would become and same as the Allegro. The Passat should have been compared to the Morris Marina.
@@renaultlover1 I just don't see the point in comparing the FWD Allegro, designed in the early 1970s, with a RWD, air-cooled, rear-engined car designed 30 years earlier. You might as well compare the Allegro with a 2CV. Likewise, the Passat was much more sophisticated, and expensive, than the Marina.
I knew a Welsh exchange student my last two years in college in Colorado. We both liked cars and he introduced me to a lot of British domestic models I'd never heard of. When he showed me a picture of himself with an Austin Allegro (his car at the time), he never called it an Allegro, only a "Faillegro" as it was so unreliable his wrench turning couldn't keep up with it. Sadly, I lost track of him when he went back. Cool guy though.
Coolness and Allegro ownership, not usually a phrase seen together :-) ( my first 3 years of driving was in my Mum's maroon allegro estate a memorable car ).
Whenever you see reviews of the allegro, marina or other filth released by BL in the 70s, you can see British presenters desperate to note they're utterly shocking, but holding back because the cars are British and they'd be accused of disloyalty.
Wow! The prices...only about £1k ! When did prices take a massive leap? In 1985, I bought a 1982 Lancia Beta Coupe that had cost £11K when new. That’s more than TEN TIMES more than that Allegro only ten years earlier.
It only lasted so long because BL.had no money to build it's replacement. Even when they did find some money to build tge Maestro a lit of the underpinnings were Allegro
A remarkable little view of the world of 1973. Like many in the UK, the presenter used the old "schoolboy Latin" pronunciation of "Audi". Rarely or never heard today. Neither car has a passenger-door mirror. The diagnostic socket was a rarity even in 1976 when iur family had its first Passat. The Allegro was a part of the death of the pre-nationalisation BMC/BLMC tragedy. Apparently built for export, but with almost no export sales. No tailgate, no folding seats... not much of anything. And continental buyers ignored it, even when they lived within 50km of a BL agent. Amusing to see the Passat before the 3/5-door body took over. As for the Allegro, the last of the 1100/1300 models were still in showrooms when thos was filmed. And... Apart from the (then) slightly dated looks, they were better cars in almost every way. And the Passat? It was already a decade ahead. Fabulous old footage, full of nostalgia and charm.
still the golden times for Leyland. Passat was far from perfect, rosting etc. and Leyland had yet the money to build a new car at all. But the commentator was aware, what will come..... Golf was in sight....
My dear, late dad drove an "Ordi 80". He was one of that generation who learned their Latin pre-war, so "au" was pronounced "or". After retirement, he switched to a Golf, that he insisted on calling a "Gofe". And, having spent several months in the Normandy campaign and then several more on Hamburg after VE day, he slipped into German from time to time and said "I bought a very nippy little Fau Vey". So he went from an Ordi 80 to a Fau Vey Gofe. Nobody ever really knew what he drove.
@@billybellend1155 I wondered about that. Why would they film the review with the bonnet unlatched? But it was an Allegro, they'd probably discovered if you latched it you couldn't get it open again...
@@JoeyMudflats I imagine going inside the car to fiddle around with the bonnet release cable would have disrupted the flow of the presentation. That said, I'm not sure the Allegro was generally available to the public on an L-plate (might be wrong about that), so this was probably just any old spare one BL had lying around, which could already have been thrashed to within an inch of its life and have bits hanging off everywhere!
By the way British Leyland was a creation of the UK government, a reason we should not let politicans micromanage the economy. There job is to create an environment where industry grows, creates jobs, promotes exports with effective regulation.
If BMC hadn't merged with BMH in 1968 to create BL, BMH would have collapsed. Both companies were woefully mismanaged by greedy, short-sighted and pompous individuals who didn't think of investing in research and development or treat the workers who made the cars with a modicum of respect. The part nationalisation of BL of 1975 was the only way to stop the business going bust and saving thousands of jobs. VW, Renault and even Skoda proved that car manufacturers partly owned by the state could be successful ; the UK government unfortunately continued the British tradition of under investment and dictatorial mismanagement.
@@MajorKlanga The Wilson Labour government (1964-1970) came to power at a time when British manufacturing industry was in decline and decided that the remedy was to promote more mergers, particularly in the motor industry. Chrysler was already buying into the Rootes Group, Leyland Motors had acquired Standard Triumph in 1961 (and would buy Rover in 1967) and had become a major automotive force. BMC was suffering a dramatic drop in its share of the home market. Tony Benn, appointed Minister of Technology in July 1966, brought pressure to bear on the industry.
It's interesting that this review has VW against BL, as VW have shown that merger\aquisition works well. Just a small point, but the merger of Jaguar and BMC became BMH, and then the later merger of Leyland (Rover and Triumph) and BMH became BL. WIth hindsight it's easy to see that the volume arm of BL (Austin and Morris) were dragging down the "prestige" (and profitable) arm (Jaguar, Rover Triumph). But it could have (and should have) worked and at the time something desperately needed doing! Donald Stokes gets a lot of bad press, but he turned Triumph around in the 60s and it's a real shame that he couldn't have done the same with BL into the 70s.
The much mocked quartic steering wheel - so many VAG and PSA cars have something similar now with no comment from the motoring press. The UK press basically mocked the UK car industry to extinction
You Sir have great taste ,I owned one in the 80s and after fitting electronic ignition it never really let me down, but the dreaded tin worm got to her so had to go to junk yard heaven
I had one as my first car, they were nowhere near as bad as people say, the styling was a bit strange but I think that is a subjective thing anyway and yes the quality control was piss poor but as an engineering job there was nothing wrong with them and the interior particularly on the series 2 and 3 cars was much better than many of its contemporaries. I would suggest that if you got out of a modern car and drove one now the driving experience would be pretty poor but I also had a 3 litre Capri back in the day which I thought was the dogs do dahs at the time but I recently had the opportunity to drive a late 3ltr S and kind of wished I'd just kept the memory.
The allegro is certainly the more interesting and characterful car of these 2. I'd quite like to experience one, though build quality probably wasn't that great, there's just something about them. It didn't look like any other car in its class, which I think is a plus.
The allegro 1500 was wonderful!
Tony is the main man! He puts Clarkson & Co to shame. Straightforward, no bs or stupid antics, car reviews. Sadly TB has passed on and we are left with Flintoff & Co.
Great TV broadcast. Outdoor TV broadcasts were quite unusual in 1973, 99% were shot with poor quality film. The colors are quite vivid in this video and there ia a real "live" feel to it. Impressive for a 50 year old footage!
I am still very curieus how much more resolution there is on the Quad-tape. This seems to be captured on a simple capture-USB right of the monitor output of the VTR. I think a real 50 frame interlaced capture on 576i is probably a step up.
Dear old Tony, a class journalist of his time. 👍👍👍
I can't believe that the Volkswagen Passat had a computer diagnostic port back in 1973!
yes Germans were ahead of their time!
You can bet it told you bugger all though
Green Light: Car Works
Red Light: Car Doesn’t Work
@@AnthonyNewman-lp5qq And probably filled half the workshop...
marvellous, drive was a fantastic show and tony bastable was a great presenter
Tony an excellent presenter
Welcome back, dearest Bastable, after, what seemed, almost a year!
Still as Pissed Off as Ever !!
I join you!
@@ianmax69 I’d say he sounded bitter, bemused the whole time.
Prophetic words about the future 'front wheel drive, front-engined mini-car...' we came to know as the Golf. The Allegro's replacement, the Maestro, would end up using the Golf's gearbox because BL lacked the means to develop one.
Nice Video.My parents got an Allegro and I had myself a Passat.
I’d love to go back to this quieter time
in this time, the gear boxes of the trucks been louder than the engines of the same trucks!
"both cars are remarkably similar, they both have engines and 4 wheels"
Hahaha!
Yes - whát a load of BS!
The Passat looks at least 10 years more advanced than the BL product, from design to layout and size. Actually the Allegro should have been compared to the ¹st Gen. POLO.
The Passat is in the Princess and Marina size class.
@@wernerbloemwagen6878 you can see the money invested in Passat
@@dragospahontu And you can imagine the comedic management meetings that went into the Allegro!
Both have bi-directional steering!
'The steering wheel works quite well..until you start going round a corner..' 😛
*tight corner.
@@kamrankhan-lj1ng Actually, the Ford Corsair had a similar shaped steering wheel back in the 1960s.
Perfect for the American market
@@paulyflyer8154 Sorry about the confusion, but I was thinking about the UK Ford Corsair, which was basically a Mk1 Cortina with a more upmarket body on it.
@@paulyflyer8154 perfect because there are no bends on American highways???
My dad bought a Passat LS estate in 1975 when I was 11. Spent hours in the back of that looking out at all of the other cars on the road building a fascination of cars. Always preferred the foreign motors such as the Passat, Renault 16, Alfasud, the weird rotary Mazdas etc etc etc to the staid Marinas, Triumphs, Allegros and Maxis that were built in the U.K.
Those early car memories stay with you and shape you forever.
Never seen a motor show with a keener gaze than Drive-In.
Even new cars looked used back in the day..... but my oh my Tony steals the show yet again, with his matter of fact delivery and yellowness
Had the same passat not for long sold it to a mate he ran it for year's loved it 👍👌👏
This still looks so so modern! As if it was recorded last week or so. Unbelievably it was 48 years ago. 48 years before 1973 would be 1925! that is crazy. Way on the other side of World War Two. If they had made such a car review show it would look a lot more 'dated' (in fact it was before the era of Television!)
Yet the technology in today's cars compared to that generation is light years ahead.
Yeah, I've noticed that with a lot of the Thames early/mid 70s car programmes, it's kind of uncanny the way they look and sound so fresh after so many decades. Even the music from that era (the good stuff like David Bowie etc) still sounds great today. I guess they were using video tape and not film for OB recordings by this point? It might account for the 'immediacy' of the images?
Cars advanced much faster from 1925 to 1973, than from 1973 to the present day.
1973 was far from primitive
@@liminal-m3g Sports coverage aside,yes Thames , LWT & Yorkshire were using VT a lot on dramas, sitcoms and factual programmes even in outside location work like this, way before the BBC & more regional stations .even black & white programmes 1968 to circa1971 . These 3 companies as well as Granada have a proper archives only the BBC could dream of. Still it looks as if the Drive in Archives are only partially in tact, As the show ran from 1971 to 79.
@@keithe8449 though popular cars from 1973 particularly UK , some smaller Japanese & a few continental made cars were still sold with cross-ply tyres, dynamos,drum front brakes , single braking circuit , non collapsible steering column, non laminated windscreens & lack of heated back window.
Brazil made this first-gen Passat all the way to 1987, the last model had a 1.8 GTS trim with Recaro seats, a sought-after collectible nowadays.
1973 Passat, the start of a legend
Yeah
we got our first in 1977, 2nd in 1979 and my first car been a 1982 Santana/Passat...and also my last VW!
NKM 460M lived until 1990! Good innings.
It went from T-Rex to the Rave/House era! : )
That's good going for a car *made* in 1990, never mind a 1975 Allegro. Elderly owner no doubt.
@@TheGalacticEmperorOfLabels NKM 460 M was the reg of the VW, the Allagro provided was a reg year older.
I've never ever seen a 2 door Passat in my life. I wonder how many of them are left.
@@juliestonelake7606 I worked in a VW dealers in the 80's. There were quite a few in for service.
More of these please
Tony Bastaple. He didn't suffer fools and he didn't put up with any nonsense
That's incredible! computer diagnostics in 1973 for the Passat. Who'd of funk it?
The air-cooled 411E with Bosch efi from 1971 (!) was first to have diagnostic.
Vorsprung durch Technik ! And yes these VW too rusted like shite
@@gertvanderhorst2890 Didn't some later Type 3's have it a couple of years earlier? 1967 or 8 if memory serves, or was that a different system? My parent's model, from 1976, didn't rust and was apparently the only one in history that didn't. It wasn't a reliable car, but rust wasn't an issue.
Yes the diagnostics helped me watch my Passat’s compression going down service by service.
I thought Shaw Taylor was coming on to say the Allegro was totally criminal!
If you see Harris Mann's original drawings of the proposed Allegro the look is very sleek and attractive. However, this was in the British Leyland days, and they seemed to have had a deep hatred of the motoring public, so, they spoiled the design totally. They gave it the appearance of a cartoon pig bursting for a shit.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the berks in Longbridge could have nailed the thing together properly.
I seem to recall hearing somewhere it was made higher to accommodate the engine pity really as you said it could of looked really nice.
@@phhu7554 True. And also the heater matrix which was very deep. Both the E series engine and the heater system compromised the original sleek design of Harris Mann, hence the bulbus and pig like shape.
What a great clip seeing Tony Bastable talking about the cars of the day. Its so sad that he died young. OMG The Austin Allegro and a choice of 4 ENGINES!!!! Under the bonnet when a MAN could TINKER with it Its all diagnostics now and in the next 10 years no COMBUSION ENGINES - ALL ELECTRIC
So now I see where the C8 Corvette interior designers got their inspiration from for the steering wheel. And as others have commented, shocking to see computer-based diagnostics available on an early-1970s car. Google says VW first introduced this technology in 1969!
It wasn't that big a deal as it only measured dwell angle of the contacts ( which by the late 70s were getting obsolete on popular cars) Charging rate,& possibly a timing sensor reading. Both Chrysler UK & the Rover SD1 had the same a few years later.
@@mikemartin2957 I appreciate your insights. Anything before the mid-80s and my knowledge of cars drops exponentially.
I can smell the vinyl seats and memories of 3rd degree burns off the vinyl seats on sunny days.
The smell of the little ashtrays built into the side panels full of cigarette butt's.
The smell of 3 star petroleum and a having my lungs pumped full of lead.
Shit times best forgotten. 👍
Thanks for sharing
A square wheel, that idea really took on.
My first car was a 1500LE Mk2 in the metallic green.....
Funny - the Allegro hardly sold outside of the UK has the windscreen wipers layout like on a left hand drive - while VW changes it accordingly.
Wow
there is a reason, Brits doing things only Brits understand...
Germans try to understand others!
Jesus, Even when brand new, Allegro's looked like they'd been on the road for 10yrs...
Hahahahah!
Yes , mechanically speaking the 1100 &1300 Allegro were (apart from instruments, suspension, Hydrolastic to Hydrogas & that steering wheel ) similar to it's predecessor the far superior 1962 to '74 BMC1100/1300.& It's many derivatives!
No they were sexy
So badly put together , rubbish electrics , bad interior and an out of date engine. What could possibly go right.
I was going to buy one on Wednesday but this review put me off.
Hahahaah
My Dad had a '79 Passat, which was in shit brown colour unfortunately with a biscuit colour interior. It was quite a revelation and leap forward mechanically from his previous motor, which was an air cooled Volkswagen fastback. The Passat had a hatch and the 1.6 engine which put out 75 hp, so it would have been nippy enough in its day too, as it probably didn't weigh much. It had efi which made a distinctive whirring noise on start up, I can still hear it now in my minds ear!
I like brown cars, you can see the money invested in the Passat vs the Allegro
That whirring sound is due to EFI???? I always thought it is transmission noise!
our 1979 Passat GLS, 5 doors....been 925kg in weight.....my now Hyundai i10 is over 1000kg..
the Passat been quiet fast with its 75hp....you could prove it here, on the Autobahn!
its survived over 12 years!
I wonder why they compared these two cars they're in two different classes. Volkswagen came up with the Golf a year later in 1974 and competed against the Allegro whilst the Passat against the Morris Marina.
You've answered your own question, golf didn't exist at this point, and apart from the beetle, the Passat was the smallest VW, so bang in competition with the allegro.
Passat only moved up a class when the golf arrived
@@Thecrazyvaclav They should have compared the Allegro to the Beetle. That would have been fair.
@@renaultlover1 Hardly. The Beetle was a rather primitive, economy car. The Allegro was more sophisticated and aimed at a different market.
@@nkt1 Primitive yes, but the same class as what the Gold would become and same as the Allegro. The Passat should have been compared to the Morris Marina.
@@renaultlover1 I just don't see the point in comparing the FWD Allegro, designed in the early 1970s, with a RWD, air-cooled, rear-engined car designed 30 years earlier. You might as well compare the Allegro with a 2CV. Likewise, the Passat was much more sophisticated, and expensive, than the Marina.
My! The Passat has grown!
the new Golf is bigger than a Passat from 1973...
Good the have the car segments back.....at last!
Jeez - Passat would be £21 grand in todays money about the same as an A3 I guess
I think VW pushed the Passat upwards when the Golf/Jetta came out.
I knew a Welsh exchange student my last two years in college in Colorado. We both liked cars and he introduced me to a lot of British domestic models I'd never heard of. When he showed me a picture of himself with an Austin Allegro (his car at the time), he never called it an Allegro, only a "Faillegro" as it was so unreliable his wrench turning couldn't keep up with it. Sadly, I lost track of him when he went back. Cool guy though.
Coolness and Allegro ownership, not usually a phrase seen together :-) ( my first 3 years of driving was in my Mum's maroon allegro estate a memorable car ).
Whenever you see reviews of the allegro, marina or other filth released by BL in the 70s, you can see British presenters desperate to note they're utterly shocking, but holding back because the cars are British and they'd be accused of disloyalty.
I'll have the ford consul Capri in the back ground as the allegro is being driven thanks
Your welcome. Could I please have the Riley Elf following the Passat?
Really enjoy these old reviews - more please!
What's an Ordi?
That Allegro sounded 15 years old already, strained engine, gearbox whine and creaking suspension!
I like the Allegro more it has some nice and funny looks that make you smile! The Passat should have compared to the Princess 1800 and 2200!
sure, with a 1,3l and 1,5l engine!
@@Arltratlo E Series was good!
Lovely weather
Wow! The prices...only about £1k ! When did prices take a massive leap? In 1985, I bought a 1982 Lancia Beta Coupe that had cost £11K when new. That’s more than TEN TIMES more than that Allegro only ten years earlier.
Sir, You had a very beautiful car.
I love Lancia, especially Gamma Coupe.
@@jareknowak8712 thanks. It was a long time ago now. If you are interested you can see more of the cars that I owned on www.bmwclassics.co.uk
Thanks!
The 1970s had rampant inflation.
My dad’s new Golf GLS, bought in 1980 on the first day of W-reg, cost about £4,000 as I recall.
I have some old car magazines from the 70s, inflation was mental. In '77 the price of a new cortina had doubled in a year.
@@owenlewis8006 that's amazing. Yes that's what must have done it the crazy inflation we had.
Inch high Tony.... Much missed
More storage space after two years. You could stuff your belongings in the new-established holes
My head says VW but my heart says buy the 1500cc dogs dinner.
Hahahah
they got later a 1.6l engine with 75hp...that was a good engine, for driving on the Autobahn!
The Allegro lasted until 1987, not bad for a seventies motor
1982
It only lasted so long because BL.had no money to build it's replacement. Even when they did find some money to build tge Maestro a lit of the underpinnings were Allegro
Both of them had a long life,for that time.
For a moment there I thought it was Peter Sellers at the very end
The 1975 & 1977 models had round headlights & different grille 77 ; 75 just round headlights .
our 1977 had square ones, our 1979 4 round ones...looked great!
Diagnostic box? For the computer? Is this really 1973?
Allegro and really Britih Car for ever and ever!
you are right, people will still wonder in 100 years what a crap the Brits hammered together and called a car!
A remarkable little view of the world of 1973.
Like many in the UK, the presenter used the old "schoolboy Latin" pronunciation of "Audi". Rarely or never heard today.
Neither car has a passenger-door mirror.
The diagnostic socket was a rarity even in 1976 when iur family had its first Passat.
The Allegro was a part of the death of the pre-nationalisation BMC/BLMC tragedy. Apparently built for export, but with almost no export sales. No tailgate, no folding seats... not much of anything. And continental buyers ignored it, even when they lived within 50km of a BL agent.
Amusing to see the Passat before the 3/5-door body took over.
As for the Allegro, the last of the 1100/1300 models were still in showrooms when thos was filmed. And... Apart from the (then) slightly dated looks, they were better cars in almost every way.
And the Passat? It was already a decade ahead.
Fabulous old footage, full of nostalgia and charm.
I would kill to have a Maxi engined , 5 speed Allegro
still the golden times for Leyland. Passat was far from perfect, rosting etc. and Leyland had yet the money to build a new car at all. But the commentator was aware, what will come..... Golf was in sight....
dont forget, Passat still build, Allegro only in museums!
Volkswagen for me I think , 🤔
to buy this wide and airy car as the allegro nowadays you have to give at least 40k euros.
I had the clutch cable brake on a night out on with my old Allegro, I had to walk home about 6 miles in the Snow ❄️ nearly froze to Death. 😂
Why didn’t you crash box it?
Start the engine in 1st gear Rev match the rest.
Still better than being in an Allaggro
Strange, my allegro didn't have a cable, it was hydraulic clutch. Like every other 70s Leyland car.
I doubt you did , Hydro Clutch on Allegros.
Passed my test in an Allegro😊😊
classic alan partridge,brilliant
My the paint work..... I bet that was the best the Allegro looked until it met a few months of UK weather....
2nd generation Ordi 80
My dear, late dad drove an "Ordi 80". He was one of that generation who learned their Latin pre-war, so "au" was pronounced "or".
After retirement, he switched to a Golf, that he insisted on calling a "Gofe".
And, having spent several months in the Normandy campaign and then several more on Hamburg after VE day, he slipped into German from time to time and said "I bought a very nippy little Fau Vey". So he went from an Ordi 80 to a Fau Vey Gofe. Nobody ever really knew what he drove.
@@BanjoLuke1 Brilliant!
You'd have to be insane to choose the Allegro over the Passat.
In 2021, which model still exists? Says it all really!
Feel like calling a Union meeting now..
I`m with you brother :)
The year I was born: eye level, can the can, watergate
Tony Bastable later changed his name to Alan Patridge.
These cars are not really competing with each other at all. Most importantly, they'e in different price brackets.
and quality....
Alan Partridge would be proud!
"The German, front-wheel drive, front- engined, water-cooled mini-car" - Nah, Tone. That'll never happen.
It happened the very next year.
....computer!
....square steering wheel!
ITS FUTURE!
Bastable is the real life Alan Partridge
I spy a nice little Inka BMW 2002 looking out to see near the end of the review
At 4:42 - "clutch foots"?
Wow - Pea & ham soup green
You could almost slide your hand through that bonnet panel gap on the allegro
The bonnet wasn’t slammed shut.
@@billybellend1155 I wondered about that. Why would they film the review with the bonnet unlatched? But it was an Allegro, they'd probably discovered if you latched it you couldn't get it open again...
@@JoeyMudflats I imagine going inside the car to fiddle around with the bonnet release cable would have disrupted the flow of the presentation.
That said, I'm not sure the Allegro was generally available to the public on an L-plate (might be wrong about that), so this was probably just any old spare one BL had lying around, which could already have been thrashed to within an inch of its life and have bits hanging off everywhere!
By the way British Leyland was a creation of the UK government, a reason we should not let politicans micromanage the economy. There job is to create an environment where industry grows, creates jobs, promotes exports with effective regulation.
If BMC hadn't merged with BMH in 1968 to create BL, BMH would have collapsed. Both companies were woefully mismanaged by greedy, short-sighted and pompous individuals who didn't think of investing in research and development or treat the workers who made the cars with a modicum of respect. The part nationalisation of BL of 1975 was the only way to stop the business going bust and saving thousands of jobs. VW, Renault and even Skoda proved that car manufacturers partly owned by the state could be successful ; the UK government unfortunately continued the British tradition of under investment and dictatorial mismanagement.
@@MajorKlanga The Wilson Labour government (1964-1970) came to power at a time when British manufacturing industry was in decline and decided that the remedy was to promote more mergers, particularly in the motor industry. Chrysler was already buying into the Rootes Group, Leyland Motors had acquired Standard Triumph in 1961 (and would buy Rover in 1967) and had become a major automotive force. BMC was suffering a dramatic drop in its share of the home market. Tony Benn, appointed Minister of Technology in July 1966, brought pressure to bear on the industry.
It's interesting that this review has VW against BL, as VW have shown that merger\aquisition works well. Just a small point, but the merger of Jaguar and BMC became BMH, and then the later merger of Leyland (Rover and Triumph) and BMH became BL. WIth hindsight it's easy to see that the volume arm of BL (Austin and Morris) were dragging down the "prestige" (and profitable) arm (Jaguar, Rover Triumph). But it could have (and should have) worked and at the time something desperately needed doing! Donald Stokes gets a lot of bad press, but he turned Triumph around in the 60s and it's a real shame that he couldn't have done the same with BL into the 70s.
In Today's money, these are the price of an Audi A3... so in that sense, cars are SO much better for the money today its hard to conceive really.
Looking back on UK cars produced in the 70's, literally makes me shudder.
Just like the cars themselves, the BL ones in particular. A shame.
A teacher at my school was still driving an Allegro in the 1980s and he was rightly widely ridiculed. The Passat looks miserable too.
We had one in the early/mid 80s and it wasn't that unusual.
@@cashcrop70 The teacher's one was a sort of Fanta orange, had very dented bumpers, smoked a lot and was a rust bucket. It had not aged well 🙈
@@karldelavigne8134 Ours was a light brown so-called Allegro 'special'; apparently more special than the Allegro 'super'.
@@cashcrop70 Passat was better. But Camry is king
If they'd done a long term test comparison, I don't think that the Allegro would have made it to the finish line.
The much mocked quartic steering wheel - so many VAG and PSA cars have something similar now with no comment from the motoring press. The UK press basically mocked the UK car industry to extinction
The bonet in the allegro doesn't seem like it's closed properly
The Allegro looks like it's from a previous decade compared to the Passat.
Imagine if British Leyland had got its act together in the 1970s. Would we be seeing Mark 10 Allegros on the road today?
*side of the road.
Remarkably Similar……!!😂😂😂😂😂. He must be joking….The Passat is still going….
He's British he's designed to like British cars
The bonnet does not fit correctly on the Allegro.
Suspect it was already ready to open.
Saloon? Those are just hatchbacks without proper rear door.
I rather like the Allegro. It was charming and weird. Then again I've never driven or even seen one in person.
You Sir have great taste ,I owned one in the 80s and after fitting electronic ignition it never really let me down, but the dreaded tin worm got to her so had to go to junk yard heaven
Same, I really like the shape despite not seeing one since I was really young.👍
I had one as my first car, they were nowhere near as bad as people say, the styling was a bit strange but I think that is a subjective thing anyway and yes the quality control was piss poor but as an engineering job there was nothing wrong with them and the interior particularly on the series 2 and 3 cars was much better than many of its contemporaries. I would suggest that if you got out of a modern car and drove one now the driving experience would be pretty poor but I also had a 3 litre Capri back in the day which I thought was the dogs do dahs at the time but I recently had the opportunity to drive a late 3ltr S and kind of wished I'd just kept the memory.
I'd have both cars
Hydragas suspension and still a choppy ride!!! strange!
The allegro is certainly the more interesting and characterful car of these 2. I'd quite like to experience one, though build quality probably wasn't that great, there's just something about them. It didn't look like any other car in its class, which I think is a plus.
Never mind the Allegro...is the kid at min 5:45 riding a Chopper??
It's so small, the Passat
It was. Every car was so small then. Gradually got bigger and bigger.
why oh why are they still testing old cars that you can no longer buy? what is going on at Thames ?
Have you not heard, the all new Mogg Motors are re-releasing the Allagro & Marina.../s
50 years from now people will be able to watch this on phones that they can carry in their pocket.......... what is a computer?
The Allegro really is the most vile car ever made. No wonder the 70's was the beginning of the end for the British car industry.
Interesting. My dad bought an Allegro in 1974. It was bloody awful, and rotted from the inside out.
our 1975 Passat served our family for over 20 years!