The Austin 7 is back – a short history of the iconic British car that changed the automotive industry

In perhaps one of the greatest brand comeback stories in automotive since the Fiat 500 in 2007^[1], British car company Austin announced the return of the Austin Arrow^[2].

Its name is an unashamed reference to one of the most memorable Austin 7 models – first introduced in the 1920s the Arrow was the original “everyman sportscar”, before the muscle cars^[3] (think of the Dodge Challenger) of the US became popular in the 1960s. Now reimagined as an electric Vehicle (EV), the Arrow is designed and made in the UK and aims to be to 2020s consumers what the original was 90 years ago.

A number of cars are synonymous with the British car industry. In fact, as a small nation, Britain punches above its weight when it comes to classic automobile brands – The Mini, the Range Rover, London black cabs, James Bond’s Aston Martins, and even the London red bus. However, if one car can be credited for creating the dawn of the motor vehicle in the UK, it would be the diminutive Austin 7.

The car was created in the 1920s at the time when Austin was struggling. New laws were pushing manufacturers to produce smaller, less powerful cars. But Austin’s board of directors didn’t support a cheap, small car with low profit margins. Austin was known for its larger, luxury products.

However, Sir Herbert Austin and his 18-year-old apprentice Stanley Edge decided to secretly create a small car. Thank god they didn’t heed the board, because they ended up creating the greatest democratising automotive product Britain had ever seen (until they repeated it with the Austin Mini).

The reason why products such as the Austin 7 come to define their period is rarely due to their technical prowess or exhilarating performance – it’s because they bring to the masses a technology that is both useful and traditionally seen as out of reach.

The Austin 7 was a bit like the iPhone. There were smartphones that came before it, like the Sony Ericsson p800. However, these were considered expensive^[4] and out of reach for the average consumer. The Iphone^[5] did the same thing but at a cheaper price and so came to be the definitive smartphone.

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here^[6]. With the Austin 7, Herbert Austin’s team applied the key lessons from Ford’s Model T – creating a simple, modestly powered car with just enough features for mass appeal while incorporating clever design elements that earned the respect of car enthusiasts. When the Austin 7 was unveiled in July 1922, it was priced at just £165, when an Austin 20 was between £600 and £700. At a time when the average British worker earned around £5 per week, the only real affordable car had been Ford’s basic and utilitarian Model T at around £250. The 7’s ingenious design was the key to its success. With a shared base frame for the car, it could be a four-seater family car, a stylish coupe, or even a racing car. This cheap, tiny car not only was a legend in its own right and familiar around the world, but it influenced other legends too. Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars, based his first Lotus 1 on the Austin 7^[7]. What is less known is that German car manufacturer BMW built Austin 7s under licence^[8] in the 1920s and 30s but called them “Dixis”. Nissan did the same in Japan^[9] in the pre-war period. Such licensing deals helped set up both manufacturers’ future success as the powerhouses they are today.

Austin 7s were produced all over Europe, Asia and even in Australia. The 7 was also produced in the US as the “American Bantam^[11]” and its design contributed to the “Willy’s Jeep”, one of the US’s most famous vehicles.

Ultimately, the beginning of the second world war marked the end of Austin 7 production as the Austin factory at Longbridge, near Birmingham, needed to be repurposed to produce munitions^[12]. When the war ended, tastes for vehicles had changed and factories started to produce more modern designs, and not those from the 1920s, marking the end of a British automotive icon in 1939.

Now it’s back, thanks to the engineer John Stubbs who bought the Austin brand after noticing the brand and trademarks were available. The rights to these had been owned by the Nanjing Automobile Group, which bought MG Rover when it collapsed in 2005. However, Nanjing had let these lapse and Stubbs bought them for £170^[13] in 2015.

The new Essex-based Austin Motor Company aims to recreate this classic brand, tugging at the heartstrings of those looking nostalgically at Britain’s automotive heyday. The announcement featured images of fun, cheap (£31,000) and light cars driving around the B-roads of Britain, or perhaps being taken to a racetrack for an amateur competition, harking back to earlier days. However, this car is thoroughly modern, featuring an electric motor.

The new Austin Arrow is not meant to be the usable “everyman” car the original 7 was. For starters, to be compliant with quadricycle (a micro car with less than 6kW of power and an unladen mass no more than 425 kg) legislation^[14] it is limited to 60mph as a top speed and the range will be a maximum of 100 miles on one charge.

However, as that fun, racy, open-top car that it’s predecessors were, it very much captures the spirit of the original Austin 7 Arrow.

References

1. ^{^} Fiat 500 in 2007 (www.carmagazine.co.uk)
2. ^{^} Austin Arrow (www.austinmotorcompany.com)
3. ^{^} muscle cars (www.nationwidevehiclecontracts.co.uk)
4. ^{^} considered expensive (www.theregister.com)
5. ^{^} Iphone (source.sheridancollege.ca)
6. ^{^} Sign up here (theconversation.com)
7. ^{^} Lotus 1 on the Austin 7 (media.lotuscars.com)
8. ^{^} BMW built Austin 7s under licence (www.bmwhistoricmotorclub.co.uk)
9. ^{^} did the same in Japan (glendiscovery.com)
10. ^{^} Rod Kirkpatrick/RKP Photography (www.austinmotorcompany.com)
11. ^{^} American Bantam (www.hagerty.co.uk)
12. ^{^} repurposed to produce munitions (silodrome.com)
13. ^{^} £170 (neeb.org.uk)
14. ^{^} legislation (www.gov.uk)