Allegro (pronounced uh-ley-groh or uh-leg-roh or ahl-le-graw (Italian)).
(1) In
music, a tempo mark directing that a passage is to be played in a quick, lively
tempo, faster than allegretto but slower than presto.
(2) In
music (more traditionally), an expressive mark indicating that a passage is to
be played in a lively or happy manner, not necessarily quickly.
(3) In
music, a piece or passage to be performed in this manner (an allegro movement).
(4) In
printing & typography, as the font Allegro, a serif typeface released in
1936 (initial upper case).
(5) In the history of the internet's lists of "the worst cars ever made", British Leyland's Austin Allegro (1973-1982) (initial upper case).
(6) In Italian use, a male given name (initial upper case).
1625–1635: From the Italian allegro (lively; happy, cheerful (feminine allegra, masculine plural allegri, feminine plural allegre, superlative allegrissimo)), from the French allègre, from the Latin alacer (nominative alacer) (lively, cheerful, brisk) (from which English later picked up alacrity). The Italian allegretto (diminutive of allegro) in musical composition is the instruction to be (brisk & sprightly but not so quick as allegro) was coined in 1740 explicitly for its technical purpose in music and the alternative form was the adverb allegro non troppo, the construct being allegro (fast) + non (not) + troppo (too much), thus understood as "play fast but not too fast". As well as the native Italian and the English allegro, composers in many languages use the term including in French allegro (the post-1990 spelling allégro), the Greek αλέγρος (alégros) & αλλέγκρο (allégkro), the Norwegian allegro, the Portuguese allegro (the alternative spelling alegro), the Turkish allegro and the Persian آلگرو. Allegro is a noun, adjective & adverb; the noun plural is allegros (Initial upper case if used of the cars of appropriately named Italian males).
Use as a musical term didn’t actually begin until 1721. Prior to that, since the early seventeenth century, English had used the word in the sense (brisk, sprightly; cheerful) picked up from Italian and Latin although the original spelling in English was aleger (lively, brisk) from Old French alegre, influenced by the Medieval Latin alacris. What encouraged the use was the adoption of the word (in its literal sense) by John Milton (1608–1674) who included the poem L'Allegro" in his collection Poems (1645). L'Allegro (the happy man) was a pastoral poem and critics regarded it as a companion piece for his Il Penseroso (the melancholy man), a work which in some ways anticipated the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. The literary use extended to the term "allegro speech" (a relatively fast manner of speaking), once often used as a stage notation by playwrights although it seems now less common, replaced by terms better known to the young. This fragment from Milton's L'Allegro is illustrative of the piece's rhythm and movement:
Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathbd smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantasric roe.
The site presumably settled on the name allegro to convey the idea of speed (fast service, fast delivery etc). Although the word allegro was never absorbed into the Polish language, because of the use in augmenting musical notation, it’s a familiar form throughout Europe. Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) used it as a title for Allegro de concert in A major, Opus 46 and his work also included three “allegro” movements: Allegro maestoso (the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Opus. 11), Allegro vivace (the third movement of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Opus 11) and Allegro vivace (the third movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Opus 21). In an appalling example of an attempt at normative moral relativism, while on trial before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg (1945-1946), Hans Frank (1900–1946; Nazi lawyer and governor of the General Government (1939-1945) in German-occupied Poland during World War II) suggested that in mitigation for his direct complicity in mass-murder, he should receive some credit for establishing the Chopin Museum in Krakow, something “the Poles had never done”. Voraciously corrupt (even by Nazi standards), Frank was protected by virtue of his past service as Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and remained in his palace until the military collapse of the General Government in 1945 during which some four million people were murdered under his rule. Remarkably, he handed to the Allies dozens of volumes of his highly incriminating diaries and the IMT found him guilty under Count 2 (War Crimes) & Count 3 (Crimes Against Humanity), sentencing him to death by hanging. His response to the sentence was to say: “I expected it, I deserved it”, adding: “A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.” The latter sentiment he recanted while awaiting execution, suggesting the trial had provided something of a cleansing effect but at the time most regarded that as cynically as they noted his rediscovery of his long abandoned Roman Catholic faith.
Although book burning was associated with the era, much publishing was still done in Germany during the 1930s and the centre of the industry was Frankfurt. In 1936 the city’s Ludwig & Mayer type foundry released the Allegro typeface, in the tradition of the nineteenth century Didone style but influenced also by the art deco designs which had become popular. A serif design which relied for its effect on the alternation of thick and thin strokes, it uses breaks in the letter where thin strokes might be expected, hinting at the style of stencils with a touch of the inclination associated with calligraphy. It was a popular typeface for decorative purposes such as book jackets or headings of musical notation but very much a display font, it works well only above a certain point size and is used almost exclusively for titles.
The Austin Allegro
Aesthetic success & failure: The Alfa-Romeo Alfasud (left) and the Austin Allegro (right).
Often featured (usually with several other products of British Leyland in the 1970s) in lists as among the worst cars ever made, the Austin Allegro was in production between 1973-1982 and actually sold in respectable numbers for most of that time although at only a third the rate of its remarkably popular predecessor (ADO16, the Morris 1100/1300 and its many badge-engineered siblings). One much criticized aspect of the Allegro was the appearance; it was thought a bloated blob in an era of sharp-edges and wedges and the critique does illustrate just how narrow can be the margin between success and failure in the execution of a concept. The Alfa Romeo Alfasud (1971-1983 (variants of the original produced until 1989)) adopted essentially the same shape and dimensions yet was praised as an elegant and well-balanced design. Seen in silhouette, the shapes are similar yet in the metal, the detail differences, a mere inch (25 mm) or two here and there or a subtle change in an angle or curve and one emerges lithe, the other ponderous.
The Allegro’s portly appearance wasn’t the original intent. Tasked with designing a replacement for ADO16, the stylist Harry Mann (1938-2023) sketched a modernist wedge, designed to accommodate what was at the time an advanced specification which included all-independent hydraulic suspension, front wheel drive, disk brakes and crucially, new, compact engines. Mann however began the project while employed by Austin’s parent corporation, the British Motor Corporation (BMC) but by the time substantive work on the Allegro began, BMC had been absorbed into the Leyland conglomerate, a sprawling entity of disparate and now competing divisions which, if agonizingly reorganized, might have succeeded but such were the internal & external obstacles to re-structuring that, coupled with political turmoil and the economic shocks of the 1970s, it staggered to failure, something the later nationalization could only briefly disguise. Thus Mann’s team learned the clean-lined wedge would have to be fattened-up because not only were the old, tall engines to be re-used but the new engines to be offered as options were bulkier still. Installed at an angle, which would have demanding some re-engineering but would have been possible, that might have been manageable but what was not was the decision to use the corporate heater unit, developed at an apparently extraordinary cost; it could be installed just one way and it was a tall piece of machinery. Allegro production ended in 1982 but what its appearance of all those "worst car ever" lists tends to obscure is it wasn't a commercial failure. Although it sold only about a third the volume of its predecessor (the BMC ADO16 range) which was for most of the 1960s the UK's best-selling car (and an export success, especially in New Zealand), the Allegro existed in a much more competitive market. Essentially, the Allegro was nearly a very good car and had it been produced by an outfit less inept than British Leyland, it'd probably now be better-remembered.
1976 Triumph TR7 coupé (left) and 1980 Triumph TR8 convertible (right). It is wholly emblematic of British Leyland that just as the TR8 had become a good car with much unexplored potential, production ceased.
Mann
didn’t forget his 1968 sketch and when the opportunity later came to design a
new sports car, his wedge re-appeared as one of the cars which most
represented the design ethos of the 1970s: The Triumph TR7 (1974-1981) & TR8
(1977-1982) which weren't quite trouble-free but which sold quite well
and, as the TR8 (which used the 3.5 litre (215 cubic inch) Rover V8), represented something in which the potential of the original
was finally realized but it was too late for by then the disaster that was British Leyland had eaten itself.
1960 Plymouth Fury four-door hardtop (left), 1974 Austin Allegro 1750 Sport Special (centre) and 2024 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 coupé (right).
The Allegro is remembered also for a steering wheel which was neither circular yet not exactly square. Actually the idea wasn’t novel, dating back decades and had been used on quite a few American cars during the early 1960s but on the Allegro it attracted much derision, something not diminished by Leyland’s explanation that it was optimal for the car and afforded a good view of the instruments. Leyland also attracted the scorn of mathematicians when they called the shape “quartic” because of it being “a square with rounded corners”. However, technically, a quartic is “an algebraic equation or function of the fourth degree or a curve describing such an equation or function” and sqound (a portmanteau word, the construct being sq(uare) + (r)ound) is the ultimate niche word, the only known use by collectors of C4 Chevrolet Corvettes (1984-1996) describing the shift in 1990 from round to “a square with rounded corners” taillights. Mathematicians insist the correct word for a "square with rounded corners" is "squircle" (in algebraic geometry "a closed quartic curve having properties intermediate between those of a square and a circle"), the construct being squ(are) +c(ircle). Few etymologists (and certainly no lexicographers) appear to have listed sqound as a "real" word but it's of interest because it's a rare example of a word where a "q" is not followed by a "u"; such constructs do exist but usually in the cases where initialisms have become acronyms such as Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services). Such words do appear in English language texts but they tend to be foreign borrowings including (1) qat (or khat) (a plant native to East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, often chewed for its stimulant effects, (2) qi (a term from Chinese philosophy referring to life force or energy), qibla (the direction Muslims face when praying, towards the Kaaba in Mecca and (4) qiviut (the soft under-wool of the musk-ox, valued when making warm clothing). For a while, Leyland pretended to ignored the pedants but within a year replaced the wheel with a conventional circular design. Whatever the name, variations of the shape have since become popular with high-end manufacturers, Ferrari, Aston-Martin, Lamborghini and others all pursuing non-circular themes and one is a feature of the latest (C8) mid-engined Chevrolet Corvette, in which, unlike the unfortunate Allegro, it's much admired.
The antipodean Edsel: 1973 Leyland P76 Super V8 (left) and 1974 Leyland Force 7V (right). Only 10 of the prototype Force 7V coupés survived the crusher but although it offered the novelty of a hatchback, the styling was ungainly and the very market segment for which it was intended was close to extinction. Even had the range survived beyond 1974, success would have been improbable although the company should be commended for having intended to name the luxury version the Tour de Force (from the French and translated literally as "feat of strength"), the irony, in retrospect, charming.
Although
1973 was the last “good year” for the “old” UK economy and one during which
British Leyland was looking to the future with some optimism, the corporation’s
troubles that year with steering wheels were, in retrospect, a harbinger for
what lay ahead. In addition to the Allegro, also introduced in 1973,
on the other side of the planet, was the P76, a large (then a “compact” in US
terms) sedan which Leyland Australia hoped would be competitive with the then
dominant trio, GMH’s (General Motors Holden) Holden, Ford’s Falcon and Chrysler’s
Valiant, the previous attempts using modified variants of UK models less than
successful. Leyland at the time kept
expectations low, claiming the target was nothing more than a 10% market share
and the initial reception the P76 received suggested this might more than be
realized, the consensus of press reports concluding the thing was in many
aspects at least as good as the opposition and in some ways superior, the
country’s leading automotive that year awarding the V8 version the coveted COTY
(Car of the Year) trophy. Unfortunately,
the circumstances of 26 June 1973 when the P76 was launched didn’t last, the
first oil crisis beginning some four months later which resulted in a spike in
the price of oil which not only suddenly dampened demand for larger cars but
also triggered what was then the most severe and longest-lasting recession of
the post-war years. Basic design flaws
in the body engineering and indifferent quality control contributed to the debacle
which is now remembered as the Australian industry’s Edsel and in October 1974 production
of the P76 ended and Leyland closed its Australian manufacturing facilities,
never to re-open.
1973 P76 with the original sharp-edged steering wheel (left) and the later version, designed for the Force 7 (right). The P76's steering wheel was one of many flaws which were planned to be rectified (or at least ameliorated) in the "facelifted" version scheduled for 1975 but before the end of 1974 the decision had been taken in London to axe the entire Leyland Australia project.
Given
the geo-political situation, rampant inflation and troubled industrial
relations of the time, the P76’s steering wheel is really just a footnote in
the sad tale but, like the Allegro’s “quartic” venture it was emblematic of the
self-inflicted injuries to which Leyland would subject itself, both in the UK
and its antipodean offshoot. When the
P76 made its debut in 1976, there was some comment that the steering wheel’s
boss had a horn-pad in the shape of a boomerang, emphasizing the Australian
connection but what was criticized was the rim which had bizarre, concave
cross-section, meaning a quite sharp edge faced the driver, leaving an impression
on the palms of the hands after only a few minutes driving. The industry legend is the shape was a
consequence of the typist (in 1973 it was accepted practice to blame women whenever
possible) who prepared the final specification-sheet having mixed up “concave”
& “convex” but even if that’s true it’s remarkable the obvious flaw in the
design wasn’t rectified at the prototype stage.
Some have doubted the veracity of the story but such things do
happen. On 23 September, 1999, NASA (National
Aeronautics and Space Administration) lost the US$125 million Mars Climate Orbiter
spacecraft after its 286-day journey to Mars and that was a time when US$125
million was still a lot of money. There
was of course the inevitable review which found the craft’s directional thrusters
had, over the course of several months, been incorrectly fired because the
control data had been calculated in incorrect units. The contractor Lockheed Martin (responsible
for the calculations) was sending data in Imperial measures (pounds) to NASA,
while NASA's navigation team, expecting metric units, interpreted the numbers
as Newtons). As far as is known, neither
the contractor nor the agency attempted to blame a typist.
How to make an Allegro look worse: 1976 Vanden Plas 1500. The consensus among testers was the best place to enjoy a Vanden Plas 1500 was sitting in the back, amid the leather and walnut, most readers drawing the inference that was because one wouldn't have to look at the thing. One less charitable scribe described it as "mutton dressed up as hogget".
In another sign of the times, unlike ADO16, one basic vehicle which was badge-engineered to be sold under six brands (Austin, Morris, Riley, Wolseley, MG & Vanden Plas), the only variation of the Allegro was a luxury version by coach-builder Vanden Plas (although there were Belgium-built Allegros and Leyland's Italian operation produced some 10,000 between 1974-1975 as the Innocenti Regent), laden with leather, cut-pile carpeting and burl walnut trim including the picnic tables so beloved by English coachbuilders. It didn't use the Allegro name and has always elicited condemnation, even from those who admired the Vanden Plas ADO16, presumably because the traditional upright grill attached to the front suited the earlier car's lines whereas the version which had to be flattened to fit the Allegro's pinched, pudgy nose looked just absurd. Still, there's clearly some appeal because the Vanden Plas cars have the highest survival rate of all the Allegros and now enjoy a niche (one step below the GDR's (the German Democratic Republic; the old East Germany) Trabant (the infamous "Trabbi")) on the bottom rung of the collector car market. One thing which may disappoint collectors is the Vanden Plas 1500 & 1750 (1974-1982) never used the "quartic" steering wheel although a photograph of one so-equipped did appear in the early brochures, printed before the decision was taken in mid-1974 to replace it with a conventional (circular) design. The photograph was of what the the industry calls a "final pre-production prototype", a common practice.
The Alfa Romeo Alfasud
In one aspect, the Allegro and Alfasud (1971-1989) were wholly un-alike, the latter infamous for its propensity to rust, a trait shared with many mass-produced Italian cars of the era, the only consolation for Alfasud owners being the contemporary Lancia Beta suffered even more. The Alfasud's rust-resistance did improve over the years but it remained a problem until the end of production and the industry story has always been that in the barter economy which was sometime conducted between the members of the EEC (European Economic Community, an ancestor organization of the latter-day European Union (EU)) and those of the Warsaw Pact (the alliance between the USSR and its satellite states which essentially duplicated the structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)), Italian manufactured goods were exchanged for Russian steel which was reputedly re-cycled but anyway turned out to be of poor quality and essentially porous. The story certainly is a good fit for the narrative of maladministration and corruption that was Italy in the 1970s but subsequent research has revealed it to be a myth, the sheet metal used in the Neapolitan factory at Pomigliano d’Arco where Alfasuds were made the same stuff that Alfa Romeo used in the facility at Arese in Milan where the Giulia range was produced and their reputation for resisting rust was good. The evidence suggests all the steel used by the company's local operations came from the state owned Taranto steel mills. Intriguingly, the factories south & north all used the same paints and the ovens & paint booths were a decade-odd newer in Naples.
Variations on the Alfasud theme: The Sprint (1976-1989, left) and Giardinetta (station wagon or estate-car) (1975-1980, right).
Given all that, the startlingly premature corrosion surprised many within Alfa Romeo and in 1977 a project-team began to investigate the causes and it was afforded some urgency given the reputational damage being suffered by the whole company (ie profits were suffering). Having determined the core components (paint & steel) weren't to blame, the engineers deconstructed the production process including the system of movement (how the partially completed cars proceeded from start to finish). What the team found was that while the electrophoresis baths at Pomigliano were state of the art, the inexperienced (and sometimes indifferently-minded) workforce operated them without adequate supervision and quality control, something exacerbated by the chronically bad labor relations, the factory beset by rolling strikes which meant unpainted bodies were often sitting for days. In the humid climate of the south, condensation gathered, many cars already rusting even before eventually receiving a coat of paint and that the plant was less than 10 miles (16 km) from the coast and the prevailing winds blew from the sea added to the problem, the unpainted Alfasuds often left for days damp with salty moisture.
1983 Alfa Romeo Alfasud Ti QV Green Cloverleaf, one of the industry's longer model names.
The team's findings resulted in a change to the production process for the revised Series 2 Alfasuds launched in December 1977. The critical parts of the bodyshell now used "Zincrometal" (steel coated with a primer which was a mix of chromium, zinc and an organic bonding resin, baked at 160°C (320°F) which was as good as anything used in the industry. As a added precaution, a polyurethane foam was injected into the body's boxed sections with a flexible plastic sealant applied at the seams to prevent moisture intrusion. That had the added benefit of reducing noise vibration & harshness (NVH) while adding little extra weight. Unfortunately, the tests the engineers conducted to prove the design was waterproof relied on perfectly applied sealant at the junctions but the poor quality control continued and many seams were poorly sealed which meant the foam acted as a moisture store, making the problem worse. By contrast, whatever its other faults, and there were a few, the Allegro resisted rust like few cars built anywhere during the era, the design sound and that 1970s British Leyland paint thick and durable. In the years that followed, many would criticize the sometimes lurid and even sickly shades but as a protective coating, it did the job.
Ultimate Alfasud: The Giocattolo.
The much admired coupé variant of the Alfasud was sold as the Alfasud Sprint (1976-1983) and the Sprint (1983-1989); it proved rather more rust resistant. It was subject to continuous product improvement and fitted with progressively larger and more powerful engines although none were larger than 1.7 litres (104 cubic inches) which limited its use in competition to events where outright speed mattered less than balance and handling. It handling was about as good as front wheel drive (FWD) got and in events such as hill climbs the things are competitive even today. The ultimate Alfasud however was the Giocattolo (a play on the Italian word meaning “toy”), built between 1986-1989 in a batch of 15 on Australia’s Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Instead of the small four-cylinder engines, the Giocattolo was fitted with a mid-mounted 304 cubic inch (5.0 litre) Holden V8, driving the rear wheels through a ZF five-speed transaxle, the combination yielding a top speed of 160 mph (257 km/h), a useful increase of 40 mph (65 km/h) over the fastest of the factory Sprints. As impressive as the mechanical specification was, the Giocattolos are best remembered for the unusual standard feature of a 375 ml bottle of Bundaberg Rum (the Sunshine Coast's most famous product which began as a way to use a waste-product of sugar-cane processing) and two shot glasses as part of the toolkit. These days, a company would be cancelled for such a thoughtful inclusion.
