BLOG: A tale of two lucky VDP's - part 1

by Andy Perman

I own two Allegro Vanden Plas 1500 variants; one is an early mk1 in Mirage with Tuscan leather interior. The second one which I bought 8 years after the first one is a Mk2 in Denim metallic with a black vinyl roof and cream leather interior. If you are a regular on this group you no doubt will have seen many pictures of both these cars darting about on various tours and shows up and down the country. However it all could very nearly have been a different fate for these two VDP's. The way that I came to own them both was far from straightforward, I’d never even considered myself as owning and running an ‘old’ car, let alone two of them

The story began back in the Autumn of 2009; I was working on a site (I’m a plumber) south of Hindhead. We were converting a bungalow into a house which basically involved taking the roof off and adding another floor. It was a tight awkward site with not much space for our vans, meaning that when deliveries were made it involved a lot of shuffling of vehicles. On this particular day my van ended up nudged forward almost under the scaffolding, so you can guess what happened next. Crash! Several roof tiles slipped and landed square in the centre of my van bonnet. Great. The site manager, whom I still work with to this day said "don’t worry, get another bonnet and I’ll cover the costs of buying and fitting it."

So that evening I went on eBay, which was fairly new to me back then and found a perfect match bonnet in a car dismantler yard, even better it was only a couple of miles away from where the job was. The following morning I phoned the scrap yard, oh yes we still have the bonnet, we’ll get it out for you ready. Lunchtime I wandered into the yard office. Ah, you’re the bloke about the bonnet, nah, we haven’t got it out yet, do you want to get it yourself? I was directed to the far end of the yard where all the bonnets were roped to a fence, assuring me it wasn’t too buried. They lied! It was right at the back of a stack of at least a dozen of them, so I got stuck into shifting the front ones out the way. 

As I was doing this, my eyes fell onto what was obviously an old car the other side of the fence parked amongst half a dozen much newer cars that were somewhat shorter than the manufacturers intended. My interest spiked, I put down the bonnet in hand and wandered round to get a better look. It wasn’t pretty.

All four tyres were flat, many lights and front grille were gone, the paint was dull but the body work didn’t look in bad shape and the interior looked untouched. I however had no idea what it was. I’m old enough to remember Allegros, but this one looked different. I’ll phone Dad, he’ll know what it is. "Dad, I’m in a scrap yard, there’s an old car here, looks like an Allegro but the front is different". ‘Vandy Plas’ he said straight away.
​
What year is it? ‘N’ I said. "Oooh, early one that". Then he said what made me buy it. ‘I always fancied one of those back in the day but I could never afford it. Is it for sale?’

Those words struck something in me so I found myself wandering back to the yard office, the bonnet forgotten. The old car you have, is it for sale as it’s not in the main yard? What’s the story with it? Dunno was the reply. "Go and have a word with John in the tyre bay, he knows more about it. Oh, here’s the keys for it I think", he said handing a bunch over. Turns out John didn’t know a lot more about it but did say it had been pushed into the yard about six months earlier for scrap value. The lads in the de-pollution yard had raised it on the ramps but felt it was a bit of a shame to kill it so pushed it into the corner with the repairable cars and forgotten about it, whereby it had been trophy hunted unfortunately.

We were now back at the car where I tried the keys, it opened. I stuck my head in and was greeted by the most glorious smell. Leather and wood. Tried the ignition, nothing. Tried the brake pedal, straight to the floor. Tried the handbrake, nothing. I popped the bonnet. The engine bay looked OK, bit grubby and surface rusty, however the radiator had been cut out and so had the battery and leads. Everything else seemed to be there so far as I could tell. Weird. John was loosing interest by now so I popped the question, can I buy this car. I’ve got 400 quid in my pocket. Delivered to Portsmouth. Deal? Sod off was the reply from John, so I shut the bonnet, locked the car and gave him the keys. Then I remembered the bonnet so said thanks and wandered off to get it.

Unbeknownst to me, John followed in hot pursuit and caught me up back at the bonnets. "You was bein serious wern’t you?" "Of course I was. I won’t mess you about. Deal?" We shook hands. So back in the office, with the bonnet I’d come in for originally stood outside we did the paperwork & V5. He’d deliver the car ‘next week, prob Weds mate’

The drive back to the site was a blur. What the heck had I just done? What was I doing even thinking about buying an old car? How was I going to fix it? I knew very little about this stuff, only enough to keep things working back in the day on the cheap.

​But the biggest worry to me was how on earth was I going to explain this to the wife?

To be continued……