Yeah, D1ck0, absolutely certain they went to the positive side of the coil. And Simon, I've checked the boot a heap of times, the negative pole of the battery is at the rear, and it is connected to the body.
Now... Here's a different thought... The coil's just a transformer. From my rusty memory of high school, a transformer didn't necessarily have to have positive and negative sides.

It just needed current in and current out. Would having these connections the wrong way round destroy anything..?

If I look at
the Pertronix installation manual (Page 2), it shows that the wire from the ignition is to go to the Coil's Positive Terminal. And the only thing off the Negative Terminal is the Ignitor wire. Well, despite my car being negative earth, there is only one wire on the Positive Terminal, and that's from the Dizzy. There are two existing wires to the Negative Terminal (which means they'd be wired the wrong way round?), neither of which went to the dizzy (ground), and the Positive Terminal had only the Dizzy connected to it.
So, will switching the connections on the Coil (so that the Ignition connects to positive) destroy the Coil..? I'm guessing I've already basically destroyed the ignition module, and I'm loathe to destroy a Coil too.

But what's there - negative earth battery arrangement, but power feeding from the key to the negative terminal, and positive formerly connecting to earth - is already the opposite to what is normally done.
If I do switch the connections - so that the power/key goes to the Positive Terminal, then the rest of the connections
should, in theory, look more like what's shown on the Pertronix diagram.

With the Red Wire going to the Positive Terminal, along with power from the key, and the Black Wire going to the Negative (and I'm guessing grounding through the dizzy body..? Through the ignition module's baseplate..? Not that it's important).
I'm only asking this bit because, looking at the Pertronix diagrams, the battery in my car, and the current arrangement at the coil, it looks like what was there was connected wrongly to the coil...

If that's the case, I was always doomed to failure.

But if it's the case, I'm wondering if it's theoretically possible for the car to have fired and run. And run nicely at that.
Thanks for continuing to help me out here.

Lots of confused, patient pondering

going on here... Last night it was more panicked pondering.
