Ford’s Allegro II concept car

As opposed to the Alex Tremulis and Ken Spencer concept car images we recently pulled from the Ford image archives, this photo of the Ford Allegro II concept comes from a later era, specifically 1967, though it has its roots in an earlier concept that was integral to the development of the Mustang.

Any Mustang history naturally starts in about 1960 when the recently promoted Lee Iaccoca formed the Fairlane Committee to explore ways in which Ford could begin to capture the baby boomer market. Benchmarking the Corvair Monza, the committee was led to a design by Bob Maguire’s advanced studio called the Allegro, a four-passenger fastback with Ford’s then-signature round taillamps and a front end that could easily be mistaken for a Chevrolet Vega’s, were the two not separated by a decade. Who exactly designed the original Allegro remains a bit of a toss-up. Randy Leffingwell, in his book, “Mustang: Forty Years,” attributes the design to Maguire, while Gary Witzenburg, writing in “Mustang: The Complete History of America’s Pioneer Ponycar,” credits Gene Bordinat and Don DeLaRossa. Alternatively, Ponysite.de claims that Phil Clark had a hand in its design. Whoever the designer really was, Ford eventually built a fully functional version atop a Ford Falcon chassis, painted metallic gold.

That first Allegro was finished in late 1962 and, painted red, was shown with a group of other similarly sized concepts referred to today as Ford’s X-cars. Out of that program came the Mustang II concept, which would go on to influence the production Mustang. About all the Allegro contributed to the production Mustang were elements from its fastback roofline. And that was about all that was seen of the Allegro until 1967, when Ford pulled it out of retirement, sliced off its roof and tacked on some flying buttresses that connected via a basket handle with integrated headrests for the driver and front-seat passenger. (Those flying buttresses, incidentally, appear to come straight off a design study that the Lincoln-Mercury design studio proposed for the Mustang in 1962. Coincidence?) The metallic gold paint remained, but now with a pair of green-gold stripes. Ford simply described it as a contemporary version of the fastback Allegro, and one must presume that the same Falcon chassis that was under the original Allegro supported its predecessor as well.

We’ve yet to come across a designer’s name attached to the Allegro II or any mention of the Allegro II’s whereabouts. We suspect Ford has it stashed away somewhere in Dearborn. Can anybody confirm that suspicion?