Okay, okay, I know for many of you, the answer to that headline is going to be something like it all looks weird, it’s an Austin Allegro! But, you see, I don’t buy that. I know the Allegro gets all manner of shit from pretty much everyone, especially Britons, but I just don’t think it’s that bad looking? I know the styling was compromised to make room for legacy engines and bulky HVAC systems, but I just don’t think the result was that bad?
No, the thing that looks weird to me isn’t really so much the styling, but has more to do with the suspension. Specifically, what looks weird is how high the body seems to be sitting on the wheels. Look at how much gap there is between the tire and the wheelarch!
I mean it, look:
That’s, uh, that’s a lot of ride height, a lot of space. I showed David the car, and he mentioned how cars like this don’t exist; small cars with high ride heights, but I think he was thinking of cars where this was intentional, like AMC Eagles:
On an Eagle, the ride height was a byproduct of the four-wheel drive system and was very intentional; the Allegro was just a front-wheel drive car that was never marketed as an off-roader, which makes the ride height feel less planned.
Were they all this high-riding? Let’s look at some commercials, and see these babies in motion:
Hm. That one is pretty dark, and doesn’t give us much to go on. Plus, all the kicking! And legs aplenty, there’s stacks of them! But we never really see the car’s legs, the wheels. Let’s try another:
This one is more interesting, because we get to see the suspension actually rise as the weight of those, what, dozen or so people is removed from the car, and, yeah, it seems to settle pretty high.
The suspension used in the Allegros was interesting; it was called Hydragas, and was an evolution of the old Hydrolastic suspension system that used soft rubber springs. Here, the car was suspended on four gas-filled balloons that used valves and nitrogen gas to absorb shocks and bumps and keep things level.
The front and rear suspensions were interconnected so when the front wheel went over a bump, the rear was prepared for it:
The system is too much for me to go into here and now, but it must have contributed to the high ride height, right? Also, I think I kinda like the high ride height look? There were other lovely cars with a similar stance, like the BMW 507, which still looks great even when beat to crap, like this one:
Why do I like these funny long-legged cars? I think I just do?
I do have to say, the dash on these is kind of dull, and look at that gauge to the right: an awful lot of hash marks for a fuel and oil level gauge. This one has a normal, rational round wheel. What fun is that?
This is more like it! The “quartic” wheel, a sort of strangely rounded-off square wheel, was a nice, weird Allegro trademark.
I feel like lowering a car is an easy shortcut to making something appear more stylish and sleek. But there’s something weirdly appealing, in a gawky way, about the opposite.
Or is it just me? Maybe. Maybe I’ve been looking at pictures of Allegros too long?
When you get a car that had multiple wheel sizes, but you get the smallest size and there was only one fender size and no add-on flares.
It looks ok to me but my first thought was that the bean counters downsized the wheels to save money.
The problem with the Allegro is that the front half looks fine on its own, the back half looks fine on its own, but when you put them together, it somehow looks like a car which had an accident.
The 507 does not ride that high. The photo shows Elvis Presley’s 507 before restoration, and it was missing the engine.
I wouldn’t say that they sat low, either. Hopefully the link works, but this one with engine still sits pretty proud.
https://cars.bonhams.com/_next/image.jpg?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg1.bonhams.com%2Fimage%3Fsrc%3DImages%2Flive%2F2018-10%2F12%2F24816365-1-29.jpg%26top%3D0.080000000000%26left%3D0.060000000000%26bottom%3D0.915000000000&w=2400&q=75
Original Minis also had this high water ride when new, even without the hydrolastic suspension tho they quickly settled down some. Jason, take a look at some of your old brochures on the Mini to see for yourself.
I’m surprised you didn’t know that when Austin decided to source their door handles from AMC, they automatically got a license to build their own version of the Eagle line.
You can take a deep dive on the Allegro here:
https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/austin/allegro/
But my guess is that this was a case of injudicious parts sharing, something that British Leyland were very fond of. I expect that in this case they used the displacers from a bigger car. My favourite one is the doors though.
https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/bmc/1800-2200/doors/
The same set of doors were used on their family sedan, the top-of-the-range limo, and then later on a mass-market hatchback. They weren’t even particularly nice doors!
It’s a reasonable guess, given BL’s history, but Allegro displacers aren’t shared with anything. Trust me, I’ve had to find replacements for mine.
I bow to your greater knowledge! Maybe they just pumped them up as much as possible at the factory so they would settle to the right ride height?
Oh, they’ll go higher than that. The specified height is not at all the limit of the system and the spec is given in terms of height, not pressure, which does produce the awkward-looking proportions shown at the top of the article. I’m not familiar with the Hydrolastic systems used in, for example, Minis, but with Hydragas there really isn’t a way for the suspension to settle without leaking either internally or externally (which admittedly could itself be a BL specification…) so they’ll stay essentially where they’re put for years unless something fails.
Small inexpensive cars that were meant for heavy duty use on rough roads had suspensions like this on purpose.
The weight of you, your wife and your cow would compress the suspension, yet you’d still enjoy a soft, compliant ride over the cobblestones in your village.
Look at the Citroen 2CV – Same thing.
Unlike today where you’re expected to endure a bone-crushing ride before you even put any passengers or luggage into your ground-effects car with rubber-band tires – because “sporty” – unless you toggle the suspension into “comfort” mode for something more tolerable – but then it’s not an inexpensive car anymore.
And your cow won’t like sitting on his cousins anyway.
Sorry i don’t have a thought about the ride height of Austin Allegros; i got bogged down remembering the Bat Mitzvah i attended at the Fox and Hound Inn of a girl i had a big crush on when i was 13. I’d like to say growing up in suburban Detroit was weird but mostly it was pretty dull.
I’ve seen cars a few years old that are halfway through a modding, they’ve had lower profile tyres added but the suspension hasn’t been lowered yet, gives this sort of look, I kind of like it to be honest.
I have fond feelings about my stays at the Fox & Hound Inn, but I haven’t been in ages and the only definite memories are bumping into a young Kurt Russell and crying while checking out.
Does Kurt Russell know what he did to you?
Do the police? Show us on the doll….