Myth Buster
Vanden Plas 1500
Debunking the most common old wives’ tales 1 THEY HAD SQUARE STEERING WHEELS
The ‘Quartic’ steering wheel – which was more of a rectangle with rounded edges than a true square – was the most notorious feature of early Allegros. However, this only lasted on Austin versions from 1973 to 1974, and was never fitted to the Vanden Plas, which was launched in September 1974. This didn’t stop the owner’s manual showing a layout with a Quartic device, though.
2 THE STYLING WAS BY HARRIS MANN
BL’s chief stylist may have penned the Austin Allegro, but the VdP front end came from Vanden Plas chief executive, Roland Fox. Vanden Plas was a British Leyland subsidiary; Fox saw the prototype Allegro in 1971, two years before its debut. He thought it could be moved upmarket – a quick sketch on the back of a postcard introduced the chrome grille and a raised bonnet line for which the 1500/1.5/1.7 became (in)famous. Production Vanden Plas models, built at Longbridge (but trimmed at Vanden Plas’s Kingsbury facility), featured a rather taller grille than Fox envisaged in 1971. Later 1.5 and 1.7 cars had their VdP fittings added at the MG ‘Pavlova’ works in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
3 THEY WERE ONLY AVAILABLE WITH THE 1.5-LITRE ENGINE
Vanden Plas Allegros – although we shouldn’t call them that, because they were never officially known as Allegros – mainly came with the same 1485cc E-series engines found in Maxis. However, the larger 1748cc E-series did belatedly (and briefly) join the line-up with October 1979’s MkIII. But it was only available for cars with automatic transmission and fewer than 250 were made before VdP manufacture ended in August 1980.