Hello. I'm Austin.
The Austin A35 was the successor to the Austin A30 which was, according to Austin, the “new Austin Seven”. The Seven was Britain’s equivalent to the Model T Ford, wildly outselling every other car in Britain throughout the ’20s; true to form, the A30 was also very successful, selling nearly a quarter million cars between 1951 and ’56.
Austin’s answer to the Morris Minor, the A30 was one of Britain’s first monocoque designs. This allowed high strength and low weight, which allowed the 0.8 litre engine (forty-nine cubic inches, take that America!) to give the Austin a blistering top speed of at least 63 miles per hour.
The A35 featured such luxurious and upscale features as a painted grille with chrome surround (replacing the A30’s chrome grille) and actual blinking turn signals instead of semaphores or “trafficators”. It was thus named because of the new, more “powerful” 34 horsepower engine. It therefore performed slightly better than the 28-horse A30, which took 28 seconds to get to sixty.
Count that out. Then imagine merging onto a motorway.
Cor, it’s a cute little thing, though. I wonder if this guy is using it to just run about town, ’cause hey, who needs a valid American number plate for that, right?
the sketchpad 