1977 Rover - Austin Allegro HL from UK and Ireland - Comments

Brakes failed, head gasket blew, faulty electrics, clutch worn, carburetters broken, the list is a mile long.

Absolute shed. Never before have I seen such a useless wreck, even my previous car, a "Lada", was more reliable.

OK, well what do you expect for a car over 24 years old with over 100,000 miles on the clock? I mean, a re-con engine and you would have addressed all your problems, as with any car. The fact it has survived that many miles and 24 British winters is a credit to Leyland. Don't see many Mk II Escorts with that history, do you?

I don't think that's any credit to Leyland - the car's got less than 200,000km on the clock - it shouldn't need a re-con yet, whether that mileage has been done in 5 years or 25. There is no excuse for faulty electrics, either - this is either poor workmanship or poor design. Whether or not you see other cars of this vintage around or not is irrelevant - it's absolute quality that counts, not relative quality. No wonder the British car industry is dead.

I agree with the the first reply 200K km (120K ml) is pretty good, what do you want from an (Almost) free car, Blood?

Now lets see 24 years & 100000 miles, so it`s been used for a lot of short trips which would wear the clutch, time & British winters would finish off any electrics & the head would suffer from old &/or incorrect antifreeze mixture! DOH! What do some people expect for the money a rolls?

Everyone knows that the Allegro had its problems, but you cannot deny it's a great little design with bags of character. I particularly liked the estates, we had an R reg harvest gold example. My dad hated it, he jokingly named it 'Rustin Allegro'. But despite the bad build quality it was a great car. After we sold it I'd often see it around for many years. I hope to get one soon!

I drove my friends princess the other day. After my 1983 240d it felt a bit tinny but what can you expect. Its easy to punch the british car industry but you must remember these people are great engineers and although we have no large manufactures anymore british engineers are making large contributions to new car design throuout the world. The british, the french and the germans are truly world class engineers.