Austin A70 Hampshire Countryman

The Austin A70 Hampshire Countryman I discovered at Goodwood features in Colin Peck's British Woodies 1920s-1950s, one of Veloce's splendid Those Were the Days series. It is on the jacket and inside, complete with badges, which it has since lost. The period badge bar remains. There is no room for badges on the flush fronts of cars nowadays. Shame really. They did add a bit of personal identity to a car. Apparently Papworth Industries made 900 of these handsome estate cars between 1947 and 1949. Only seven are believed to survive, of which MAS 867 is the only one roadworthy. The main picture on the jacket is a Ford Pilot - the Austin is hidden by the folded bit on the picture above.

Alfasud in Venice

You can scarcely imagine a less suitable place for a car launch than Venice. Yet Alfa Romeo once used it for an Alfasud in the 1970s. We had a test route based at nearby industrial Mestre through interminable traffic, so it was a less than successful exercise for a car that was a revelation. Sadly it suffered terribly from body rot. Alfa had been directed by the Italian government to build a factory in Naples for the relief of unemployment and, as with every attempt by politicians to meddle in the motor industry, it ended ignominiously. It used such low quality steel that the pretty bodywork started disintegrating almost as soon as it left the line at Pomigliano d’Arco. Wikipedia thought this might be due to, “storage conditions of bodies at the plant,” which seems altogether too kind. The Alfasud design was developed by Austrian Rudolf Hruska and 893,719 saloons and 121,434 of the exquisite Sprints were made between 1971 and 1989. However as Autocar reported despite its incredible handling, easy cruising and practicality it suffered from a bad driving position, lack of safety equipment and, in a damning criticism for the usually well-disposed testers of September 20 1973, it was, “not that reliable.”
Alfasuds then cost £1,471. The engine was a sweet-revving flat four with a belt-driven overhead camshaft at each end. Rack and pinion steering and superb balance made it an outstanding drive at a time when Austin was making the Allegro and Morris the Marina. The Sprint was an early work by Giugiaro but frailty led to the delightful Sud being consigned to a footnote in automotive history.

Went back to Venice last week. The streets are still flooded, yet what an architectural and cultural delight it is, notwithstanding hordes of tourists. They flock to it and pay up cheerfully. WS Gilbert knew how expensive Venice was when he wrote with perfect irony, “We’re called Gondolieri/ But that’s a vagary/ It’s quite honorary/ The trade that we ply…”

JENSEN SP

I really can’t be bothered with old cars that are stiff in the joints or creak, rattle and break down. It’s not a fashionable view, but there you are. After a lifetime testing cars straight out of the factory, carefully prepared by press departments, that is how I like them. Patina is all very well but the only way we can understand old cars is with thoroughgoing complete renovations. Proper restorations, which bring them back to what they were when new, are instructive.

Take this beautiful tangerine Jensen SP restored by owner Phil Hayes. Preserved on blocks for 17 years, it was brought back from Kent to Cheshire four years ago to win silver at a Jensen Owners’ Club concours. A star of the NEC Classic Car Show it has still only done 47,000 miles and following my recent Jensen item, Phil kindly sent photographs showing how splendid it is. Refurbished, he says as a labour of love, he has good reason to be proud; the before-and-after pictures of the engine show how much work must have gone into it.

This Jensen was important, a transformation from the uncouth CV8 of 1962. Vignale’s elegant Interceptor, introduced in 1967, still looks good today. It was a welcome change from bulgy glass reinforced plastic to sleek shapely steel. Along with cars like the Aston Martin DB4 of 1958-1963 the Jensen showed up-market British cars could be stylish. Alas it proved prone to rust, but preserved beautifully as in this case, it reminds us what a triumph it was. Penalty of the 7212cc V8 is fuel consumption I described at the time as like the bath running out. I went to the press launch where the FF was demonstrated on wet grass banks. Sixteen years ahead of the Audi Quattro, this was a refined four wheel drive car with automatic transmission, Powr-Lok diff, Dunlop Maxeret anti-lock brakes, a 4in longer wheelbase and two extractor vents on the side.

Glorious Goodwood

Off-track the Goodwood Revival is a paradise. The racing is fine but how glorious to find oddball cars you haven’t seen for years. An Austin Sixteen like the one in which I passed my driving test. A bit down at heel perhaps but what do you expect for a 63 year old? They made 36,000 for a post-war car-starved market. And Riley RMs. There seemed to be a lot this year. Imagine it; torsion bar independent suspension and twin high-camshafts in 1946-1952. How well-proportioned and what fun for geeks looking for dark blue badges for 1½ Litres and light blue for the 2½. The first time I saw 100mph from a driving seat was in a 2½ in Glencoe. Maybe it wasn’t quite. Speedometers were notoriously optimistic, but it certainly felt like it. The car park was full of that were quite ordinary a generation ago, like the Austin A70 Hampshire converted into a woody estate. I wonder if it was original. Quite a lot were made as estates in a wheeze to escape tax. I wonder if it was sold.
Exotics in the car park. The Hispano-Suiza badge features the colours of Spain (red and yellow) and the Swiss white cross on red. The story behind the stork, like the Ferrari prancing horse, goes back to a First World War aviator, in this case the French ace Georges Guynemer an adversary of the Red Baron. His SPAD biplane, powered by a Hispano-Suiza V8, failed to come back from a flight over the Western Front on 9 September 1917. His squadron adopted the stork symbol of Alsace (annexed by Bismarck in 1870-1871, which France was then trying to win back) and in 1919 it was applied to the cars made at Bois-Colombes, in the Rue du Capitaine Guynemer.
Aeroplanes were one of the best bits. This is Number One daughter with the Spitfire. She is into vintage clothing and the hat is based on a 45rpm vinyl record. See http://tuppencehapennyvintage.blogspot.com. It is astonishing how the British enjoy dressing up. The period feel is amazing even though what looks like a visiting general taking to Dad’s Army is a Major with a staff officer’s hat and the medal on the left dates from the First World War (but with the ribbon the wrong way round). Well maybe not so odd. Quite a lot of the Walmington-on-Sea worthies guarding the Tangmere satellite airfield were probably 1914-1918 veterans.

The Motor: 13 October 1914

A GOOD PIECE OF WAR JOURNALISM crowed The Motor of 13 October 1914. The Manchester Guardian had reviewed a piece by the magazine’s Paris correspondent, entitled “A Day’s Motoring in the War Area.” There was no doubt that it would be all over by Christmas. Cancellation of the motor show at Olympia was a small price to pay for getting over the current unpleasantness.

Number one daughter is into vintage magazines and this World War I The Motor is one of her collection. War reporting apart, it was concerned with turning events in France to the motor industry’s advantage, Henry Sturmey proclaiming, “It is easy to shout ‘Capture German Trade,’ but by no means so easy to do it.” Sturmey had great hopes for the Russian market after the war following disappointment by the failure of British banks to support trade with Russia before it. Sturmey had set up a £30,000 deal for postal vans, the Russian government asked for six months’ credit, but his bank wouldn’t oblige so the contract went to Germany. Alas for punditry. Banks, governments, industrialists, economists and John James Henry Sturmey (1857-1930) never expect another four years of war, a shaky peace and the end of Tsarist Russia.

But what was the founder-editor of The Autocar doing writing in The Motor? Sturmey started The Autocar in 1895, but business connections with the rascally Harry Lawson and the equally dubious Edward J Pennington became problematical and he left Iliffe the publishers in 1901. The following year he tried to build American Duryea cars in Britain and founded The Motor in 1903. A towering figure in the early years of motoring journalism, he is perhaps best remembered as the developer, with James Archer, of a compact hub-mounted 3-speed gear for bicycles.

The Motor worried that readers might have difficulty recognising the chassis of the car illustrated as a Ford. “It looks more like a small Italian chassis than this well-known American make.” Ford had been making cars at Trafford Park for three years, yet The Motor firmly regarded it as American. Small wonder that by the 1920s its motor show appearance emphasised Britishness.
“With a body of low build such as this the entire appearance of the car is altered. This ingenious yet attractive body is by Oakley Ltd, 85 Regency Street, London SW. It is constructed of polished aluminium, with nickelled fittings in the rear of the radiator, which is surrounded by a black metal casing giving it a greater height and imparting the popular rounded edge appearance.”

However, there was no disguising the Model T, which teetered on its transverse springs. “A number of possible purchasers have taken exception to the high-pitched appearance,” counted as forthright, in an age when it was deemed discourteous to be critical of cars on page 297 that appeared in a full page advertisement opposite 299. “The body is built below the frame level, the footboards are lower than standard, and thus the general appearance of a low-hung car is obtained. Rudge-Whitworth detachable wheels with conical discs to allow of easy cleaning are fitted. Similar cars can be supplied for £220, with variations according to the fittings required.”

Oakley also made what The Motor called “an interesting modification of the Ford van.” This sold for £115, panelled in what was called matchboarding inside. It would carry about 10cwt (508kg), “and forms a most attractive proposition for the rapid delivery of light merchandise.”