Austin A30 / A35 (1952 – 68)

The Austin A30 is a small family car produced by Austin from May 1952 to September 1956. It was launched at the 1951 Earls Court Motor Showas the “New Austin Seven” and was Austin’s competitor with the Morris Minor. At launch the car cost £507, undercutting the Minor by £62.

Though Austin had previously contracted the American industrial designer, Raymond Loewy in the task, the designs of Holden ‘Bob’ Koto were discarded and the car we know was eventually styled in-house by Ricardo ‘Dick’ Burzi. The body structure was designed by T.K. Garrett, who had been an aeronautical engineer before joining Austin. It was of fully stressed chassis-less construction, which made it lighter and stiffer than most contemporary vehicles, and the first Austin to be made in this way. Inside there were individual seats at the front and a bench at the rear covered in PVC with an option of leather facings on the seats. Evidence of economy was seen in only having a single windscreen wiper, central combined stop / tail / numberplate lamp and a sun visor in front of the driver only. A passenger-side wiper and sun visor, and a heater were available as optional extras.

Originally only offered as a 4-door saloon, 2-door variants were introduced in late 1953, and in 1954 a van and van-based “Countryman” estate were made available. Despite having a smaller loading capacity than the equivalent BMC O-type Minor based vans (60 cu ft as opposed to 76 cu ft ) the Austin van offered the same payload. Being slightly lighter and stiffer, it was favoured by businessmen, and saw long service for many.

The A30 was replaced by the Austin A35 in 1956, by which time 223,264 A30s had been built. The A30 had a smaller rear window than the A35 and trafficators instead of modern indicators, which popped out from the B pillar when operated by a knob mounted on the centre of the dashboard.

The car, along with the larger-engined (and hence faster) A35, was quite successful in 1950s saloon car racing, and some still appear in historic events.

Performance

The car’s newly designed A-Series straight-4 engine was state of the art for the time and returned an average fuel consumption of 42 mpg . With spirited driving the A30 was able to attain a top speed of 70 mph (factory quoted). In its road test The Motor magazine achieved a top speed of 67.2 mph and a 0–60 mph time of 42.3 seconds. Braking was effected by a hybrid system, with Lockheed fully hydraulic drum brakes at the front and a body-mounted single cylinder operating rods to the rear wheels, which despite being heavily criticised as archaic and old-fashioned, were reported to be quite acceptable. The rod system provided good handbrake efficiency and was applied by a lever in an unorthodox position to the right of the driver’s seat (Right hand drive vehicles). Bumps were handled by independent coil springs at the front end and beam axle/semi-elliptic leaf springs at the back.

A35

Introduced in 1956, it replaced the highly successful Austin A30. The name reflected the larger and more powerful 34 hp A-Series inline-four engine, enabling a slightly higher top speed and better acceleration.

The A35 is very similar in appearance to the A30, except for a larger rear window aperture and a painted front grille, with chrome horse-shoe surround, instead of the chrome grille on the A30. Both have 13 in wheels. The semaphore turn-signal indicators were replaced with modern front- and rear-mounted flashing lights. A slightly easier to operate remote-control gear-change was provided. Much of the improved performance is a result of different gearbox ratios. The A30 has the first three ratios close together then a big gap to top (fourth gear). The A35’s ratios are better spaced and give a higher speed in third gear. Like the A30, the A35 was offered as a two- or four-door saloon and two-door “Countryman” estate and also as a van. The latter model continued in production through to 1968. A rare coupe utility (pickup) version was also produced in 1956, with just 477 sold. Drawings were made for a sports tourer, but no prototype was actually built.

A two-door de luxe saloon with the 948 cc engine was tested by the British Motor magazine in 1956 and was found to have a top speed of 71.9 mph (115.7 km/h) and could accelerate from 0-60 mph (97 km/h) in 30.1 seconds. A fuel consumption of 41.5 miles per gallon was recorded.

The A35 passenger cars were replaced by the new body shape A40 Farina models in 1959 but the estate car version continued until 1962 and van until 1968.