It was called Diablo. And I own one. Not, regrettably, the bombastic V12 supercar from Sant’Agata, but a 1977 Leyland Princess. Which, during its development in the early 1970s, went under both its official ADO 71 codename, and early on the Diablo label, its creators not a little excited at the wedge-shaped beast they had conjured as a replacement for one of the frumpiest family cars on British roads. And believe me, in the early 1970s, competition for that title was strong.
As a teenage British Leyland fanboy – one of the rarer sub-species, I admit – the 18-22 Series was hugely exciting. The 18-22 Series? That’s what the Princess was called for the first six months of its life, there being Austin, Morris and Wolseley versions. British Leyland’s regular, self-induced branding crises, both for the company itself and its cars, saw all three iterations bundled under a new Princess brand in 1976, the name-pilfered from BL’s Vanden Plas cupboard. Why not Diablo, the Italian for devil? You do not need to be a Wordle fiend to work out which unhelpful adjective this would morph into at the first sign of unreliability.
And that would come. We’ll get to the collapsing rear suspension later. For now, this BL-lover was avidly reading Autocar and Car for deep dive descriptions of the car’s styling, engineering and its maker’s ambitions for this shockingly modern new model. After the profound disappointment of the Allegro, this made for tense reading. But, the news was pretty good.
