Vanden Plas 1500/1750

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[edit] Description

The Vanden Plas 1500 and Vanden Plas 1750 were variants of the Austin Allegro motor car produced in the United Kingdom between 1974 and 1979, and badged under the Vanden Plas marque.

Allegros, manufactured under the Austin marque at the British Leyland factory in Longbridge, Birmingham were sent to the Vanden Plas factory in Kingsbury, North London, to be fitted with a luxurious interior featuring leather seats, wall-to-wall carpeting, a walnut dashboard and walnut picnic tables. The cars also gained a new bonnet panel allowing for a prominent chrome grille.^[1]

The Vanden Plas models were marketed as small cars with all the luxuries of a traditional British luxury saloon, quite different from the more utilitarian appeal of the Allegro. For example, an Allegro brochure of 1974 boasted that the car was "A new driving force that outvalues any other British or foreign car you can buy."^[2] A 1979 Vanden Plas brochure, by contrast, sought to reassure the buyer that this was not merely an economy car. The brochure boasted that the car was "totally international in concept. It would look equally at home in Rome or Paris or Vienna — yet its distinctive air of good breeding is unmistakably British." The brochure claimed that "Luxurious yet unostentatious, powerful yet economical, the Vanden Plas 1500 is truly a car for the discriminating motorist."^[3]

Despite having a great deal of commonality with the Allegro, the Vanden Plas was technically a distinct car, from a distinct manufacturer.^{[citation needed]} British Leyland literature referred to Vanden Plas as a marque within the Austin Morris division of BL. In the 1980s, luxury versions of several Austin products were branded with the Vanden Plas badge, and some Jaguar cars in the United States continue to bear the name. Increasingly "Vanden Plas" has become merely a trim level.^{[citation needed]}

The Vanden Plas cars were not just separate from the Austin Allegro in the eyes of British Leyland. Brochure material for the cars cited government fuel consumption statistics for Vanden Plas, not Austin, vehicles. According to the Passenger Car Fuel Consumption Order of 1977, the results of officially approved fuel consumption tests on all cars needed to be made available to customers. The Vanden Plas 1500 manual achieved an urban fuel consumption figure of 28.3 mpg according to a 1979 brochure.^[4] A 1981 brochure for the Austin Allegro noted that the figure for 1.5 litre manual saloons was 28.1 mpg.^[5]

The car ended production in 1979 with the closure of the Vanden Plas factory, although the Allegro itself continued until replaced with the Austin Maestro in 1983.

[edit] Notes