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  • Classics Monthly

    A TOUCH OF CLASS

    Nov 05, 2019 7 minutes
    WORDS: ANDREW ROBERTS
    PICTURES:
    MATT RICHARDSON

    The grille is a Marmite item as Andy Perman admits of his 1976 Vanden Plas 1500 (they never wore Allegro badging), but it certainly helps to attract the attention of various passers-by in Lee on Solent. However, it was the interior that truly amazed the onlookers, resembling as it does a mobile cocktail lounge. You can just imagine Margot Leadbetter of The Good Life delighting in one, and Mildred Roper dreaming of owning such a fine machine.

    The blue 1500 is actually the second Vanden Plas in the Perman fleet; as Andy says: ‘There is no end to my sickness!’ He discovered his first 1500, a very rare 1974 Mk1 finished in Mirage, in 2010 when he was seeking a bonnet for his Vauxhall Astra in a scrapyard. ‘I saw this sorry-looking Vanden Plas in a corner and I thought it was a waste,’ he told me. ‘One of the workers there remarked how he had always wanted one when they were new but could never afford it, and that clinched it for me.’

    By 2013 that rescued VDP was once more ready to wow outer suburbia, and 18 months ago it was joined by

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