1st introduced in 1922, the diminutive Austin 7 speedily became Britain’s initial legitimate ‘peoples car’, heading on to turn out to be anything of an institution, this technically traditional but utterly groundbreaking small automobile efficiently wiping out the briefly preferred cycle vehicles of the period (just is its non secular Austin 7 successor – the Mini – did in 1959, resulting in the grateful demise of the modern and primarily grim and insufficient microcars).
The simple side-valve straight-four 747cc Austin 7 quickly out-offered the earlier Morris (Bullnose) Oxford as Britain’s most effective automobile, with almost 300,000 examples developed in Longbridge on your own between 1922 and ’39 in a lot more than 35 differing ‘factory’ human body kinds, all pre-courting Britain’s beloved Morris Minimal and BMC/BL Mini by a long time.
The Seven also served as the foundation of a pair of today’s motoring giants – BMW and Nissan – by means of the very first Dixi and Datsun models, designed domestically beneath licence (at least in the case of the previous!), alongside with other world wide 7 derivatives produced below settlement by Bantam in the United states of america (the originators of the Earth War II Jeep) and Rosengart in France.
In addition, other now founded and revered motor vehicle makers previous and current, this sort of as Jaguar (by using Swallow Sidecars/SS) and Jensen, owe their really existence to the minor Austin by supplying fetching coachbuilt ‘alternative’ sporting and luxurious derivatives of the design in the 1920s and ’30s.