AWFUL CARS - LOVING THE LEMONS

The Reverend Colin Corke seemed innocuous enough. Even the sort of chap you'd go for a drink with, if you could ignore the dog collar, conspicuous avoidance of industrial language and the fact that he is the chairman of Allegro Club International. Proud owner of a good number of the marque and font of all knowledge on this doyen of lamentable cars, he discharges his responsibilities with game enthusiasm.

As we entered the vicarage, the full and worrying extent of the good vicar's obsession becomes vividly apparent. Two crippled Allegros sat on the drive, gently decomposing whilst Corke's plan to take the best bits of each and create one rare 1750 Sports Special took seed. The shock of seeing two of these cars next to each other was palpable, and acted as a reminder as to how rare the Allegro has become. Harris Mann's bold vision was ruined by the demands of engineering expediency and metamorphosed from futuristic wedge into automobilia's waddling oaf.

“I realised it was missing a bolt on the fuel tank. It had never been there from when it left the factory, believe it or not. I believed him.



Without a wife to rein in his excesses, Corke has allowed Allegro body parts to procreate and swarm across the house. Evidence of this oily fecundity can be found in the back garden, under the stairs, on the kitchen table, climbing the stairs and in many other nooks and crannies. Despite this manifest devotion to the car, Corke retained a refreshingly pragmatic view of its place in history. “The Allegro was never a good car, never really an adequate car and certainly not a classic,” he mused as he pondered a stray Quartic steering wheel. “What it provided was a comfortable and largely reliable form of transport.” Allegro tales are legion and range from the assertion that they are more aerodynamic when travelling in reverse to the true reports of how they were banned from the Mersey tunnel due to their idiosyncratic towing characteristics. “Let me show you the 1300 De Luxe.”



This was the cue for things to get rather spooky. Emerging from the garage in a wreath of blue smoke, shunning road salt like a t...