The Austin Counties cars - eg A40 Devon, Dorset, A70 Hampshire, A90 Atlantic & related vans/pickups
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- Опубліковано 12 кві 2022
- The classic Austin Counties cars of the late 1940s and into the mid-1950s form this upload to the Old Classic Car channel, with 80+ examples of mainly preserved Austins featured.
Having owned examples of Austin A40 Devon, Somerset, and 10cwt pickup, it was fun digging out the cars and light commercials to feature in this video. All the colour photos were taken by myself at events over the last few years, and mixed in with them I've included a few of the original b&w car photos that appear (along with many others) in the image archive section of the main Old Classic Car website, alongside which this UA-cam channel resides. Rarities include the only A70 Hereford chassis/cab (was pickup) I've ever seen, a lesser-spotted Dorset at the NEC classic car show a few years ago, and various examples of the A40 Sports.
Comments, Likes & Subs welcomed as always, to see all the car-related videos now on the channel please see the following pages:
Channel homepage: / @oldclassiccaruk
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Thanks, RJ.
#classiccars #classiccar #austincars - Авто та транспорт
Hi, thanks for watching, a full list of the videos on the channel is here:
ua-cam.com/users/oldclassiccarRJvideos
Channel homepage:
ua-cam.com/channels/KaTg9fPUvmUQi94FcnDbrg.html
On cue for Breakfast. Love looking at these photos. The rear windows on the Herefords always make me think of an orange segment, they always have.
Excellent line up there. I do love this era of Austins, the lovely bulbous shape, but my absolute dream car would be an A90 Atlantic. Our neighbour had one in the mid 50s, and she used to take myself and 2 sisters for 'spins' in it. She traded it in for a Metropolitan, which I also love, but the Atlantic 'does it' for me ! Thanks for another great video.
Austin Atlantic a 90 mostly in metallic surf blue and twin su s if my old memory serves me correctly .
very interesting. thanks. i remember my dad having an A40 sumerset, and the Devon. both black. i loved the shape of the Sumerset. it was like a big bubble to me. i was only little. but he never kept it for long. he complained it was 'too bouncy'.
he never kept his cars for long. i used to always look forward to seeing what he'd bring home next. and i always remember the lovely smell of oil and leather mix in these old cars. brilliant.
A lovely trip down memory lane... My first car in the mid 1960s was a 1952 Somerset in light grey. Loved the bench front seat (handy for a snog) and column change even if it did, once in a while, go over centre and I had to crawl underneath and flick it back before I could change gear. Loved it to bits with it being my first car and did lots of work on it. It burned a huge amount of oil when I first had it - about 40 miles to the pint I seem to remember. Made its own smoke screen after dragging down a hill. Took the engine out, new clutch, cylinders rebored, crank reground etc and ran beautifully after. I seem to remember we once had 10 people in it going across Coventry to a party. Those were the days!
The sunroof was a nice touch, but if you let the drain holes clog up you got water sloshing over you going round corners. The acceleration up to about 30 mph was not too bad. I once touched 70, just, but it would cruise happily at 60.
I am loving that the same light grey colour has finally come back in fashion again, only had to wait 70 years, ha ha.
Thanks for the memories.
Glad it brought back some memories!!
I remember back in the eighties I took the wife and kids down to Berrow beach, parked well back from the tideline and walked down to inspect the remains of a Norwegian collier that had come to grief on a stormy night in the early 20th century, the keel is still there. Near the keel the rusted chassis of a car that had sunk into the sand many years previously had re-emerged, I guessed it was an Austin originally due to the design of what remained of the front suspension and the rectangular cam follower ports in the side of the block. The aluminium gearbox housing had long since rotted away and the gears were a homogeneous mass of rust. The bronze selector forks were absolutely pristine!
Thanks Sir,I have downloaded,flask of tea made up and a stroll to the park to watch...
Another excellent presentation of how great the Austin Motor Company was in it's day. Thank you for the effort that has gone into creating this very nostalgic documentary.
Thanks Robin
I have always loved the A 40’s and the countryman holds a special place in my heart. We had one when I was a boy in South Africa 🇿🇦 and we traveled all over the country in it.
This was the first car I rented after leaving the army in the 1950s.
It seemed like a Rolls Royce after driving Jeeps In Korea.
Pity there is no trace of the Woodies. The A70 Hereford Countryman, though very rare, is simply beautiful.
My first car was a 1952 Somerset, bought in 1964 in South Africa. Twenty years later I found one in Oregon and had it shipped to Dallas,TX. pretty rare car in the USA. LHD too! Loved both those cars.
Wow can't be many Somersets over there!
That Black and Blue A40 ute.. I remember back in the day once we put a full ton on one the same colour and carried it about 300 miles. Cheers
Really nice cars I liked the Devon..But too expensive for me in the fifties
A family member had a Summerset in the early 60's, I seem to remember it being beige, possibly red interior. Austin Atlantic would be number one for me. All the vans are nice too. Thanks for sharing this collection. 👍
Maybe worth mentioning that the A40 Sports was a Jensen concept and built by them for BMC, one of many links between Austin and Jensen.
Another great selection of photographs. Thank you. I don't know why really but I never got along with my Somerset! Shame as it was a fine motor car.
My time with the Somerset wasn't exactly trouble-free either, after a rear wheel came off near Northwich I fixed it then sold it!
@@oldclassiccarUK Oh dear..not a good time with the old Austin then!
The A40 Dorset (two door) was only built in 1948-49. Majorty were built for export to North America. The A40 Dorset was never marketed in Australia, but some were imported as "knock down" kits and built up as Convertibles. The survivors of this batch of Austin A40s are now highly collectable!
A friend has one. Rusted beyond repair unfortunately
Unfortunately many in the USA got chopped up to become dragsters with massive big V8 engines. Very sad.
@@johnquilter7620 I agree. The US hot rodding community also chopped up many old style Ford Anglia and Prefects and rebuilt them as drag cars and street rods too.
Nice selection of cars. Back in the fifties Austins were a pretty common sight here in Brasil. Many were used as driving school cars. Thanks for sharing.
It would be interesting to know the numbers of A40 vans and pickups built. I remember them being everywhere and judging by the number of photographs you have of them, many still survive. My father, a farmer in New Zealand, had one which he used as a farm vehicle with a canvas top over the deck which had a wooden frame to support it. They actually come up very nicely when restored in appropriate period colours, especially with well-executed graphics on the sides for promotional purposes.
There were so most of Austin forty , Somarsett, Austin Thirty,Morris Model of cars and even Austin eight, Austin ten, Austin Mini, in Ceylon . We are able to see such of cars still in use in considerable of back wheel drive on flat roads mostly.
I had three Devons at various times in the early 60's the first was an early 49 and the last one a late 52 which had the somerset dashboard with column gear change and the somerset type steering wheel. Lots of Devons went to Canada and returned to the UK when for some reason they didn't sell.
Interesting. I would have thought they would have been left hand drive for Canada. So when sent back in the UK that would make local sale difficult.
British Columbia was the main Province that British cars went to , they were not well suited to the other provinces with much harsher and long winter climates. Even in the 1960s GM dealers sold imported Vauxhall Epics and Envoys as their smallest cars in the super low price field and these were terrible in anything but summer weather.
@@johnd8892 Reconverting these was not too difficult - they were designed to be built both ways. If you check the link I posted earlier the guy does just that, putting a good Dutch body he brought back from Holland onto good English running gear as the British body was beyond saving.
Another great collection of cars, My Dad made an Austin Devon light green, I think the reg was LLK775 not sure it was a long time ago. All the best Bob
My first car, MNC 691, was a 1951 Devon GS2 (a new version of the A40, with the 1947 bodywork combined with a central instrument panel and column change as seen in the Somerset introduced in the following year). The paintwork was the colour of an elephant's hide and about as shiny. Following recent American practice, the Devon had its engine mounted farther forward than most previous British cars; the implications of this had not been thought out very well, so that the distributor was practically hidden under the long steering-column and the tie-rod of the steering lay only just behind the front bumper and was likely to be wrecked by even a relatively slight front-end collision (this arrangement can be seen in the photograph of a Countryman at 2:20). The engine gave out and, with the aid of a hired hoist and a sceptical 80-year-old uncle, I installed a 1489 c.c. engine, but I could never get it to run afterwards; I suspect that I had fitted the distributor wrongly. The then Secretary of the Counties Car Club bought the car and put it back on the road. This was in about 1980.
Yours sounds similar to the '49 I had, also a GS2 (the car in the thumbnail)
My first car was a 1950 A 40 Devon sedan;I got it for free back in early 1969.It was a solid car with no rust as I recall.We got it running in a couple of days then did a valve job.I had it for about a year.
Wonderful 👌👍
Great video. I had a A40 Somerset in 1968. ( it cost me £22) It was a 1954. Very under powered and needed a lot to mending but it was cheap. My mate had one too. Mine was black his a sort of brown colour. He had to replace the head gasket every month as the head as warped, easy job those days. I sold mine at a profit! £25 a year or so later.
Head gaskets were definitely a weakness on these pre-B Series engines, thanks for watching
I had a Somerset saloon and a Coupe through the late 80s til mid 2000s, know what you mean about the head gaskets! It was worth the effort to replace though, the cars were so nice to drive.
Brilliant. Really enjoyed that!
Glad you liked it Bill
My gfather, a keen Austin lowner throughout his life, bought, as his final car,an Austin Somerset in the 50s, colour sage green (or thereabouts) same as his ties, garage door, front door etc, bless him. He stopped driving at 77 in 1965 after he nudged a cyclist
My very first car was an A40 Devon in 1967 bought for £10. 😮
My favorite is always the Somerset.
I took my 2nd successful driving test in an Austin A70
I had an Austin A40 in Australia which I think was about 1950 and and became a good mechanic after , I worked on the Brakes ,put new piston rings in it and had to get the head machine as it had warped, replaced the universal joint in the drive shaft, replaced shock absorbers in front suspension, had to replace a broken spring in gearbox, and gave up on the deteriorating upholstery . Traded it in on a Holden
Head gaskets were a common failure point on these engines iirc, I replaced several on my A40s
Did I miss a Dorset or was it something not included? Also didn't see the Australian soft top tourer, being a converted Dorset.
My uncle had a brand new Austin A 40 Devon.That is the car he drove me to the hospital in.when I cut my face.I must have been around six years old.I still have the scar to this day.
The Austin A40 was actually the largest selling car in Australia in 1948. Soon outsold by the 2.2 litre six cylinder Holden, with a light monocoque body design, once it got into high enough production to diminish the near year long waiting lists for the Holdens.
Despite the 760 quid Austin undercutting the 900 quid Holden.
Australia possibly got some export priority for the Austin components in the post war export priority focus of the UK. As well as the coupe utility you showed an intersting photo of, Australia even had a two door ragtop tourer version of the A40. This was aimed at people wanting the cheapest version of the car. Tourers also the lowest priced Fords of UK design here Rarely seen with the top down so as to protect against the strong hot sunlight. Also many concluded that putting the top up and down was too hard on the driver and the top mechanism.
Holden was a big part of UK brands losing market share in Australia, followed a few years later by Volkswagen having a period of super rapid growth for small car buyers. Then the Japanese makes started using Australia as a test market from the early sixties to better understand the needs of the American market. First significant Toyota assembly outside Japan in ,1963 alongside Triumphs , Ramblers and Mercedes Benz from the same Port Melbourne factory.
All bad news for the local assemblers of BMC, Standard Vanguard Triumph and Rootes group cars.
Favourites: #1 8:22 Somerset, #2 9:17 A90 Drophead Coupé, #3 2:32 A40 Sports. All very smart cars, as you say. 😁👍
Hi from India, my Grandfather purchased A40 Devon in 60s and we still have two Devon's although finding the parts is a huge headache.
Can the Austin Counties Car Club help with spares? or ebay?
@@oldclassiccarUK for now we have a stock for parts but in future it might be needed so it will be a huge help .
@@oldclassiccarUK an Indian manufacturer by the name of Hindustan Motors took licence for production of Morris Oxford Mark III so we make do with it since parts are same as BMC specifications.
I owned a grey Austin Hereford 2.2 litre car in the late 1960s. With very soft front suspension, great care had to be taken when pulling away from a stationary position. Unless the clutch was released very carefully, the front of the car would rise so much that sight of the road through the windscreen was lost for a second or two.
Wow I'd heard that they were softly damped, amazing!! :-)
Any photos of an Austin Cambridge? I had a 1956 LH drive in Ontario until evil rust allowed the frame to break.
My wonderful first car, followed by a bugeye Sprite the Mini Minor.
Hi Gordon, I'm sure there are Cambridges in some of the other photo collection vids on here now, perhaps in one of the "original photos 1950s/1960s" collections, and/or in the Classic Austins video. Thanks for watching!
I liked the picture of the A40 pedal car. I had a red one something like it as a small child so perhaps that is what it was. I don't expect it was new and even as a pre-school child I do remember that it seemed rather old fashioned compared to the much more square full-size cars of the 1960s. I might ask if there is a picture of it still about.
Great aren't they!
my grandfather has a collection of about 30 odd different austins
Wow, they must look great all together
Can anybody tell me the physical differences between the A40 somerset and the hereford ? I believe the doors are the same, the wings are a little different, but am I right in saying the hereford is longer in the front wings, and is the hereford also wider, and if so, by how much? The rear window looks wider and a flatter shape so would suggest 3 or 4 inches wider, or is just me? Thank you in advance. 😊
Yes I think the doors are the same but the rest of the body is larger, I would suggest contacting the Austin Counties Car Club that specialises in these cars. You may find the information on Wikipedia too.
Should the cream Hampshire pickup get resprayed? Or should it retain the authentic patina of a working vehicle? The new owner thinks it looks awful and must be made shiny, what do you think...
It's lasted all this time to get where it is now, wearing its age on its sleeve and rightly so IMO. To repaint it would ruin it completely. I suspect it'd also de-value it somewhat, if that's a consideration.
Agreed. I’d rather see an honest weatherbeaten surface displaying its history than shiny new paint making it look like a fibreglass replica or a filler queen. To spray or not to spray is a conversation happening now with the present owner who seems set on a respray unfortunately.
Hereford ! Saloon ,woodie, convertible and pickup ?
They did all sorts on the A70 andon the A40 chassis
@@oldclassiccarUK yes... but where are they in your video ?
My dad had a Devon after the war I don’t know what year it was. I have some photos of it and the tool roll it came with including the KING DICK monkey wrench. All the tools have “Austin” stamped into them.
I never saw the car, before I was born. The consensus of family members I spoke to about the car was it was a dreadful machine.
My dad lived in Oakland, California at the time and and drove it all over California. I have a photo of the car in Bishop, California. That’s pretty far if you look at a map. It must have been a grueling drive in that little car back then. He told me it came with brass lug nuts, British Motors told him that brass would into the steel better and form a better hold. He got new steel ones and had them installed.
I have never seen a Devon myself.
First car I brought a40 devon for £15 back on 1966.
l had a 49 devon, l could top out the speedo. l snapped the crankshaft anf back axle, ripped the lower wishbone support from the chassis, l gave that car hell, first real car
PYB 196 on a Somerset? I had PYB 992 on a Citroen light 15 now long since weighed in. Still got its front bumper if anyone wants it.
Interesting to note the pick-up trucks available in those days. I wonder if people were more honest then making it possible for owners to leave items or tools in the open. Also,modern cars are more bulbous now,causing insurance companies some concern about scratches. I used to see cars like these every day as a kid,knew them all at a glance.
There are plenty of pickups around now too, but yes people were more trusting in the 1950s. Some cars didn't have an ignition key even, just a switch for the ignition.
My 1st car was a A40 devon green reg no lov 948
I had three A40s through the 80s to the mid 2000s and went to lots of Austin Counties Car Club rallies - that registration definitely rings bell! I wonder if it is still living?
I have Austin A50 for sale in Japan
Did Nissan build them under licence?
@@oldclassiccarUK yes I think
I thought 1949 Devon cars never came with vent windows? that came in mid 1950s
I don't remember offhand when quarterlights were fitted to the doors, it was a long time ago, but it probably varied by market etc
@@oldclassiccarUK Well, Looking at the Austin manual those photos ,and having owned a 1949, Dorset ,and had a Devon early 1950. I had noticed this .The older cars didn't have what we call vent windows here in Canada and the USA . But some later mid year models in 1950 came with them early car didn't . If you look at the video in the link of a 1949 Devon restoration this car has it's original doors /no vents. But one has to remember the older cars could use the new style doors and maybe even have those vents added. The only reason I have known about this is I have had many Devons and a few Dorsets . One was a drag car unfortunately because it was a 1947. And I know of a few more in my area that were also built in the 1960s into Gassers with 327 V8 engines . I still have A40s just saved one from going to the scraper ,it has an interesting back story .kind of sad . The car was driven by a lady and much loved she preferred the Somerset car and her husband had a 1952 Devon car . Both the cars were bought second hand in the mid 1950s. Her Somerset was the go to town car . The people owned a farm and had 3 kids . In 1964, the lady was told she had cancer ,and in 1965 she could no longer drive the car . Her husband put the car in the barn under a cover . Long story short . I had an Ad looking for parts for the A40 Countryman I am restoring , One of the Kids answered my ad and said they had some Devon parts because their Dad had bought other cars to keep his going but they had been towed to scrap because they were very rusty . But he said there is one in the barn still if you want it you can have it or it is going to scrap. Well see it at first it looked very sad indeed
Grille had been hit and was broken someone had started sanding on it but stopped trim was taken off and the window was left open so thing had gone through it . But the Cats had found a good place to hunt . I said Well ? I looked around the car as he told me the story of it and the fact that himself and his brother used to smoke in it as teens. At one point they wanted to demo race the car and were going to paint the car but couldn't get it to run and gave up. As I looked at the car I noticed no rust the floors were good still painted the engine turned the little things started showing themselves to me . I said look I'll buy the car for 100.00 but will need some time to come and get it about 2 months . As they were selling the farm and cleaning up they agreed and were happy that I was getting the car . The daughter was very happy about that. So the cars name is JD named for the lady that loved it . The car was better than I expected . I did re-seal it and took all the bearings out and cleaned them and greased them I put a new head gasket on it . I found inside the car as I was doing the seats a 5p cigarette package tucked under the factory back seat cover Woodbine green packaged I also found Austin inspector OK with their number like .inspected by 284 OK at strip of paper . The Car was built at the Austin plant in England in June 1953.
All the numbers match . This year is is back on the road again . Why they couldn't get the car to run was they had IGN.. power a mouse ate through the wire . I re-wired the car with a Spark's loom. Very good harness by the way. Hope you liked the JD story ...Victoria BC
Forgot the link for the video of a 1949 Devon..............ua-cam.com/video/m-YPNpvUDhQ/v-deo.html
Real English cars
The Austin A90 Atlantic cost as much as a Buick in the States--Yanks would prefer a huge, comfy eight to a small four. The US market opportunity at the time was to meet the demand for cars not being filled by the local manufacturers, not to provide exotic funny little cars that were seen more as expensive toys (which is why most Yanks bought British cars) than practical transport. It's not surprising that the Atlantic sold poorly--it was too expensive to be practical transport, and not exotic enough to justify its expense as a good toy.