Thursday, April 20, 2006

I know you're not interested in old cars....

But I am! So what about this for a description of the Austin Allegro

'It leaked, its rear screen popped out if you jacked it up in the wrong place and, for some reason, it had a square steering wheel'.

Top marks to Surlygirl for reminding me about the square steering wheel. The Allegro experience was truly a privilage for those of you lucky enough never to have been near them. Unfortunately I did not ecape the hideousness of owning possibly the most embarrassing car ever made. It cost me £40 with three months mot - surely a bargain by anyone's standards. It was horrible and actually it was so bad I am not even going to begin cataloguing all it's faults.

It was my final British car - sadly I abandoned my patriotism in favour of more reliable motoring.

11 comments:

  1. Was the Allegro the one that talked to you?

    If so, I went in one once. It seemed amazing at the time.

    Silly me.

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  2. A square steering wheel. How cute!

    I remember my dad having an old Ford that you had to start with a crank handle at the front. It was black, and sort of box shaped, and had red leather upholstery. How times have changed.

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  3. a leather-upholstered crank handle? how lavish.

    my friend got her head stuck under the steering wheel of a hillman imp once, but we won't go into that.

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  4. I have never had, nor do I ever intend to have, an interesting car.
    I will leave you poor sods to discuss induction manifolds and so forth, and come back when you are talking about sex. (Not with motor vehicles, please).

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  5. You know if I wanted to make this thread really take off I could take this opportunity to develop the 'how do you get your head stuck under the steering wheel of a Hillman Imp' theme. Before you know it everyone would be piling in with all the similar situations we've surely all found ourselves in over the years.
    But no, this is about old 60s and 70s classics, and the Imp was surely one of those. My only memory of the Imp was the rather tenuous connection between the gearstick and the gearbox - it was all a bit hit and miss, like it was connected by elastic.

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  6. My apologies Surlygirl, I thought you wrote 'I wish' there, not 'lavish'. Actually it would have made for a better line.

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  7. well I have no shame, please tell us the story of the stuck head sg?

    *blinking innocently*

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  8. God forbid the westcountry folk ever work out how to get online and get hold of all this viagra. Heads stuck under steering wheels will be the least of our problems.

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  9. don't come the innocent with me, laura.

    i couldn't possibly say, but i'm sure you can probably work it out. she didn't half panic though. well, you would, wouldn't you?

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  10. Surly girl. LOL. Yes, I see there was some dangling going on there :-)

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  11. Hmmm. I've just made sense of the 'stuck head' scenario. Seems to me there was a perfectly simple way to solve the problem...

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