Allegro Club International

[chris figg]

Found this article in an old 'Autocar 'mag dated 2 August 1973 about whether the Allegro should be banned from the Mersey tunnel .....

Here it is .....

Apparently the Tunnels manager of the Mersey Tunnel, Liverpool, is worried about a particular aspect of modern car design. . . the towing and lifting facilities.
When a vehicle breaks down in the tunnel and especially if it needs to be lifted at either front or rear ends, the Tunnel Police and staff are finding it increasingly difficult to handle certain modern models.
The Austin Allegro at one stage was being considered for a total ban, as there are no towing hooks and to lift the vehicle chains have to be passed through the bonnet aperture to attach to the front suspension tie bar brackets.' Now however, it seems that it will not be banned from the new Tunnel' where there is more room to tow,but merely from the old tunnel.
The manger of the tunnel,Sam Jones says that it could take 20 minutes to connect up an Allegro in the tunnel.
In an interview with the Liverpool Daily Post he said he deplored the way cars are designed so that towing is such a problem. It would seem that this is an aspect of design that some manufacturers will have to attend to.


.....so there we have it in b/w
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1976 Allegro Vanden Plas in super Reynard Metallic

[Colin T]

In a recent Quartic Mervyn said that the tunel authorities had confirmed that they never did ban the Allegro.

What I don't understand is what difficultly they think they had with towing one?? Just hook up to the towing eye on the suspension tie-rod bracket, takes no time at all!
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Hell has frozen over...... the car formally known as 'Heap' is back on the road!

[Richard Howe]

Towing eyes? How many cars in the 60s and 70s had towing eyes?! None of them NEEDED towing eyes because the bumpers didn't cover over every aspect of the underlying structure like they do nowadays... I can see plenty of beams under the front to tow from, and it's certainly no worse than sorting out a mini which is an older and lower design.

Quentin Wilson is one for spreading this foul lie, and it's on Wikipedia as well - I keep meaning to register as an editor just to fix it.
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...that's why Allegro will look as good 5 years from now as it does today.

[Laurence]

Where would one attach a tow rope to a Reliant 3 wheeler, they had moulded bumpers etc, did they have towing eyes like an Allegro has?

I expect there were several cars/vehicles which couldn't be as easily towed as an Allegro could.

Which reminds me, I've got to renew the LH tie-bar bracket on the silver VP1500 before the MOT in September (it's beginning to corrode a bit!)