If you’re American and you can recall anything about the Austin Allegro, it’s probably because Jeremy Clarkson famously declared that it was just slightly superior to the Morris Marina. Despite the fact that both cars were produced by British Leyland, they strangely primarily competed with one another.
But despite its flaws, the Allegro remains a car that is highly remembered and even somewhat celebrated among less critical antique car aficionados in Great Britain. It got to the point where some Brits made the decision to construct the ideal Allegro on a delicious Japanese chassis.
Say hello to Project Lucky Strike; it’s a heavily modified early-70s Austin Allegro body with nearly all of its internals removed, including the chassis, and replaced with the chassis and the drivetrain from a DC2-series, third-generation Honda (Acura) Integra Type R to make a machine that would’ve blown the pants off Alex Moulton, the man who designed the Allegro’s innovative hydrogas suspension. With the Allegro’s 50th anniversary passing this year, it was the Retropower shop in Leicestershire that decided to mark the occasion by building what the world at large would call the ultimate Allegro.
The Austin Allegro was originally equipped with a variety of underpowered four-cylinder engines, ranging in size from just one liter to 1.7 liters, when it rolled out of the Longbridge, Birmingham, England, plant. It should go without saying that the 1.8-liter VTEC-equipped Honda B18C inline-four engine destroys all of those outdated engines.
Naturally, this ancient Jalopy had to have practically everything removed before Retropower could fit the new drivetrain and all the new internals within this vintage body shell. It’s almost easy to forget that this particular Allegro was a two-door model given the removal of both rear quarter panels and the largely empty gap that now fills the space in between.
In any case, it’s not easy adapting late 90’s Japanese drivetrain components to work in a body shell straight out of the West Midlands in the 1970s. But with Retropower’s crack team of technicians at the helm of the operation, they’ve managed to make the job seem easy, almost routine in its execution. With the drivetrain installation close to completion and a wicked set of powder-coated white alloy wheels mounted, you can start to understand the direction the Retropower team intends to take this build.
With just enough of that classic English styling remaining but with a big power-punch of Japanese tech under the hood, we get the sense this will be a phenomenal car to drive when the finishing touches are added.