AUSTIN SEVEN
The British-born Herbert Austin (1866–1941) had emigrated to Australia as a young man and worked in engineering, but he returned to Birmingham and founded his own company in nearby Longbridge in 1905, soon turning to the new car market. His main products were soundly engineered mid-range vehicles, but he nurtured a dream, shared by so many of the industrial pioneers in the auto industry, of making a really cheap and popular car. In spite of the fears of his co-directors, who held (as many do today) that a small car means a small profit, Austin set out to make ‘a decent car for the man who, at present, can afford only a motorcycle and sidecar’ and invested a lot of his personal fortune into the design.
The Austin Seven was launched in 1922 as a ‘proper’ small car with a water-cooled four-cylinder engine (albeit only 750cc), four-wheel brakes and a weatherproof saloon body if required. It became highly popular and soon extinguished the market for eccentric light cyclecars like the GN. Austin reflected that ‘the Seven has done more than anything previously to bring about my ambition to motorise the masses’. Like Ford before him, Austin had created a new market for a new type of product.
Austin also produced many intriguing variants of the Seven, including open tourers, sports versions, full-works racing cars, and a pretty model, known as the Grasshopper, suited to the then-popular sport of off-road ‘trials’.
In the post-World War II era, old Austin Sevens were so ubiquitous and cheap that building an Austin Seven special became the easiest way into racing for numerous designers and drivers. The foundations of British supremacy today in Formula One design and construction derive from the background of ingenuity fostered by tuning and adapting Austin Sevens.
Like many car barons, Herbert Austin wanted to ‘motorize the masses’. The serviceable and cheap Austin Seven proved that a properly engineered ‘baby’ car was feasible and profoundly altered the British motoring scene.