Austin 7

Austin 7 at a glance

Herbert Austin's small-car gamble

The Austin company was in receivership in 1921, and Herbert Austin's board and creditors opposed a small car. He went ahead on his own, investing his own money, and worked on the design in the billiard room of his house, Lickey Grange. In 1921 he hired an 18-year-old draughtsman, Stanley Edge, to produce the detailed drawings. Edge later said that he had argued for a four-cylinder engine and designed the gearbox and clutch. The styling is reported to have been influenced by the Peugeot Quadrilette.

Three prototypes were built, and the car was announced in July 1922. Austin had patented many of its features in his own name and received a royalty on every car sold. The car was about three quarters the size of the Ford Model T and weighed less than half as much.

Engine and chassis

The first engine had a bore of 54 mm and a stroke of 76 mm for 696 cc. From March 1923 the bore grew to 56 mm, giving the 747 cc that most cars use. The block and head were cast iron and the crankcase aluminium. Cooling worked by thermosiphon, with no water pump, and the big ends were splash-fed, although some sports models had pressure feed. The crankshaft ran in two bearings, a ball bearing at the front and a roller at the rear, until 1936, when a three-bearing crank arrived. An electric starter was added in November 1923, and coil ignition replaced the magneto in 1928.

English Wikipedia gives the actual output as about 7.5 kW (10 hp); German Wikipedia lists 7.7 kW for the 1922–1932 cars and 8.8 kW (12 bhp) for the later ones. With about 7.5 kW and 360 kg, the car had roughly 21 kW per tonne. Our power-to-weight calculator shows how that compares with a modern city car. Economy was the point of the design: English Wikipedia quotes 5.9 l/100 km (40 mpg US) for the American Austin version, and about 1.9 litres of oil every 1,600 km (1,000 miles).

The chassis was an A-shaped frame with a beam front axle on a central transverse leaf spring and cantilevered quarter-elliptic springs at the rear. Drive went to the rear wheels. Steering used a worm and wheel, and the spiral-bevel rear axle had ratios from 4.4:1 to 5.6:1, with 4.9:1 the most common until the 1930s. The car had brakes on all four wheels from the start, but at first the pedal worked only the rear brakes and the hand lever the front ones; the system became fully coupled in 1930.

Body styles: tourers, saloons and Ruby

The Austin 7 came in a long list of factory types. The table groups the main ones by English and German Wikipedia.

Coachbuilders added their own bodies. In 1927 William Lyons's Swallow Sidecar Company commissioned a new tourer body on the Austin chassis, and a saloon followed in 1928. About 3,500 Swallow bodies were made by 1932, when Lyons began building complete SS cars, the forerunner of Jaguar; that story is told in our history of Swallow and SS Cars. E. C. Gordon England built the first Austin 7 saloon, with a fabric body 28 lb (13 kg) lighter than the tourer.

Racing and the Ulster

Racing began early. Arthur Waite, Herbert Austin's son-in-law, competed at Brooklands in March 1923 and at Monza a month later. Gordon England set six class records at Brooklands. He also took second place in the 1,100 cc class of the JCC 200-mile race in October 1923; by 1925 he held 19 class records in the 750 cc class. From January 1924 the factory sold Sports and Brooklands Super-Sports models, the latter with a certificate for 80 mph (129 km/h). The Ulster name came from the strong showing at the 1929 RAC Tourist Trophy at Ards in County Down, where Archie Frazer-Nash finished third. Waite won the 1928 100 Miles Road Race in Australia, and C. E. A. Westcott won the 1936 RAC Rally.

Licence builds around the world

• Germany: the Dixi built the car under licence from 1927; it became BMW's first car, as told in our BMW history.
• France: Rosengart produced its version from 1928.
• United States: the American Austin company, founded in 1929 in Butler, Pennsylvania, built cars from 1930 and went bankrupt in 1934; its successor was American Bantam.
• Japan: Nissan used the Austin 7 as the model for its first Datsun cars; sources differ on whether there was a licence.
• Australia: rolling chassis were imported and fitted with local bodies, including tourers and roadsters by Holden.

After the Second World War many Austin 7s were rebuilt as specials. Bruce McLaren's first racing car was based on one, and so was the first Lotus, the Mark I; Lotus's next steps are covered in our Lotus Mark VI article. Reliant used an engine derived from the Austin 7 in its early three-wheelers. Austin later reused the Seven name for the A30 of 1951 and the Mini of 1959, whose story is in our history of the Mini.