Abandoned History: The Austin Allegro Story, a Fine Motorcar (Part I)

Today we embark on the story of the small British car made famous long after its demise by a certain BBC car program. It was ugly, poorly made, and had a nasty reputation while it was still on sale. We're speaking of course about the Austin Allegro. Prepare yourself for the forward-looking new car from British Leyland.

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Curbside Classic Dead Brands Week: 1987 Sterling 825 SL (Rover 825i)

N.B. In anticipation of Saab’s (inevitable) demise, we’re going to have Dead Brands Week at CC.

We’ll start off Dead Brands Week with a royal Rover triple bang, with this Sterling zombie corpse. When it comes to persistence (idiocy) in trying to flog dead corpses in the US, Rover absolutely takes the cake. It took three US deaths to finally convince Britain’s favorite maker of cars (and its government medium-wigs) to give up the ghost. The last attempt, Sterling, is the classic English car disaster story. Despite Rover’s intentions to avoid the usual pitfalls, by building an essentially reskinned Honda/Acura Legend, they still managed to create the ultimate rolling clap-trap English nightmare.

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  • Tassos no matter how much you (very foolishly!) pay for this serial loser, you will lose EVERY CENT OF IT when it goes broke. Just like GM's shareholders in 2008.
  • Kwik_Shift_Pro4X And the next version in 6 months will be even more hotter. 🙄
  • Cprescott While this seems like good news, IIHS is a complete racket that arbitarily changes standards at a whim based on specious evidence. Once cars meet these standards, IIHS changes them so that most will fail so they get publicity. This is how they work. And I'm not even going into the fact that they are funded by the insurance companies....
  • Cprescott Good old days of Volvo. Can't say tht about their current garbage.
  • Cprescott Wasn't Heir Yutz affiliated with this company. He has the reverse midas touch.