Allegro - worth the aggro?
Discussion
After suffering appalling British company cars I still remember my astonishment when I tried the Golf 1500S which had a gear change to die for after having suffered the vague rubberised change of a Maxi. My wife had new both a Golf Mk 1 & 2 and was delighted with them. And they were very reliable too. As a daily driver I have only had German or Japanese since those days. Not patriotic but far better reliability and residuals too. But nothing was perfect in those days; I remember that the exhaust on my Manta rotted through in nine months from new. My favourite from those days will always be the Jetta GLi though. A Golf GTi with a truly enormous boot.
Edited by lowdrag on Monday 25th September 12:33
lowdrag said:
My favourite from those days will always be the Jetta GLi though. A Golf GTi with a truly enormous boot.
I had a Mars red one on an X plate in 1986, was a rapid thing. Later on, a 1989 F reg Jetta GTi in Tornado red in 1994 that had done insane mileage. Worked like a charm.iSore said:
lowdrag said:
My favourite from those days will always be the Jetta GLi though. A Golf GTi with a truly enormous boot.
I had a Mars red one on an X plate in 1986, was a rapid thing. Later on, a 1989 F reg Jetta GTi in Tornado red in 1994 that had done insane mileage. Worked like a charm.
Maybe the extra weight holding the back end down.Got to join in this thread! I had a 1300 SDL? and remember it for having the noisiest gearbox of any car I have ever run, far worse than the 1300 before it. It was orange too, like the one at the start of this thread and I chose it because the alternative Marina 1300 was even less attractive. That said, it was reliable and got me too and fro. Later I had one of the first batch of 300 Golf GTis to come into the country, four speed gearbox and steel wheels - but what a revelation, fabulous little car! I followed that with a Jetta GLi which I loved perhaps even more, better trimmed, cavernous boot and I too thought better handling. Is it worth mentioning a Triumph Toledo, utterly gutless which exploded it's gearbox one dark night when I was doing a twelve car rally..........
Mike-tf3n0 said:
Got to join in this thread! I had a 1300 SDL? and remember it for having the noisiest gearbox of any car I have ever run, far worse than the 1300 before it. It was orange too, like the one at the start of this thread and I chose it because the alternative Marina 1300 was even less attractive. That said, it was reliable and got me too and fro. Later I had one of the first batch of 300 Golf GTis to come into the country, four speed gearbox and steel wheels - but what a revelation, fabulous little car! I followed that with a Jetta GLi which I loved perhaps even more, better trimmed, cavernous boot and I too thought better handling. Is it worth mentioning a Triumph Toledo, utterly gutless which exploded it's gearbox one dark night when I was doing a twelve car rally..........
I'll probably get shot down for this, but if anything was less reliable than the Austin Morris stuff it was Triumph. Apart from the 2000 saloon, everything seemed to have major issues. The Toledo at least had a simple engine but the gear ones were made from cheese - the Marina used the same box iirc.The later Golf 1's were well sorted for rust and had arch liners in the front - at ten years old, Y and A plate ones were still fine.
The problem with BL was that they never learned from their mistakes. The Montego was a bloody terrible thing - not bad to drive but reliability was a joke. And the rust!
At two years old most would be rusting away behind the bonded in glass.iSore said:
I'll probably get shot down for this, but if anything was less reliable than the Austin Morris stuff it was Triumph. Apart from the 2000 saloon, everything seemed to have major issues. The Toledo at least had a simple engine but the gear ones were made from cheese - the Marina used the same box iirc.
The later Golf 1's were well sorted for rust and had arch liners in the front - at ten years old, Y and A plate ones were still fine.
The problem with BL was that they thoughnever learned from their mistakes. The Montego was a bloody terrible thing - not bad to drive but reliability was a joke. And the rust! At two years old most would be rusting away behind the bonded in glass.
Must take issue with you here!The later Golf 1's were well sorted for rust and had arch liners in the front - at ten years old, Y and A plate ones were still fine.
The problem with BL was that they thoughnever learned from their mistakes. The Montego was a bloody terrible thing - not bad to drive but reliability was a joke. And the rust!
At two years old most would be rusting away behind the bonded in glass.The Montego I had was a great car, it ended up doing Starship Enterprise mileage and the only time it let me down was when it snapped a cam belt, no problem though, just replace it which took less than an hour and away you went again, a snapped cam belt on the 1600 caused no engine damage. Someone did say the gearbox in a Montego was from a VW but not sure about that. The 86 Golf I had the displeasure of owning what ride fine then all of a sudden would cut out, drift into a lay-ny, turn the key and away you went again, bit worrying especially when overtaking as said earlier think it was down to the Pierberg carb.
Anyway back to to the 70s as we seemed to have moved on a decade, I've owned four Triumph Stags and with the exception of the first one I had they have all been reliable, the current one I own is a early 72 model that is bolt standard even running the two sets of points, no cooling mods and I would drive that car anywhere.
Raygun said:
Someone did say the gearbox in a Montego was from a VW but not sure about that.
VW sold gearboxes to Austin as VW were known to have great gearboxes. However the model that Austin got was the worst that VW made and not much better than the things that they could have made themselves. Gassing Station | Classic Cars and Yesterday's Heroes | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff