Austin Allegro

The Allegro was a model of the British car brand Austin, which was then part of British Leyland . The Allegro was from 1973 to 1983 in production, and the same car was inItaly between 1974 and 1975 by Innocenti marketed as Innocenti Regent.

In total, more than 640,000 Allegro's built, but the car is hardly found in European traffic. In New Zealand, however, is the Allegro often used as daily transportation.

The Allegro was marketed as the successor to the popular Austin in 1100 and 1300 . However, where the design of the 1100/1300 that model had made a great success, were friend and foe agree that the design of the Allegro not really be a success. The main problem was that the European hatchback body style was emerging with the Volkswagen Golf and Opel Kadett, while the Allegro a sedan had -like tailgate. The marketing department of BL had decided that only the Austin Maxi hatchback would be available, which would give Maxi a unique selling point.

The Allegro was driven through the front wheels, and was renewed Hydragas gasbolvering. This gas-suspension made it possible to connect the suspension of the front and rear of the vehicle with each other, which resulted in better driving characteristics. Hydragas The system was developed by Alec Issigonis (along with Alex Moulton Moulton Design Ltd.), he had to apply this system in the Mini ). BL had used this system as a simplified version of Citroën's hydropneumatic suspension. Another novelty was (in the early models) the steering wheel, which was square with rounded corners. This new steering wheel was used as a selling point, but garnered little success. Later Allegro models are also equipped with a conventional round wheel. The weakness of the Allegro were the king pins and shafts. If these specific parts were not maintained according to specifications or fixed then put it resulted in accelerated wear on parts. For example, tightening the hub nut too tight ensured that the splines of the drive shaft (on which the rotor hub is pushed) worn rapidly in the axial direction.

After two model changes - in 1975 and 1980 - the Allegro was in 1983 succeeded by the Austin Maestro .