The Austin 20
During the Great War 1914-1918 Herbert Austin drove Hudson car, why, I am not quite sure, but it was during this time that he made a decision which history has shown was almost a fatal mistake for the Austin Company.
He decided that after the war ended he would concentrate on one model only, & make it well.That model was to be the Austin 20.
After hostilities ended, he started production of the 20, baseing it on the Hudson that he had been driving.
The car itself has a 3.6 litre motor, roller followers, twin oil pickups and is altogether a magnificant car.
The year was 1919.The only real problem was that not many poeple either wanted it or could afford it.
All the men that came home from the war had tasted mechanisation and they want a piece of the action. Sales slumped and the Austin factory went into recievership
To cut a long story short, Austin scaled the 20 model down to produce the 12 and further down still for the Austin 7
The Austin 20 however was a wonderful car. It has been said that the motor will do about 700000 miles before requiring any attention and that was the reason that spares were hard to get. By the time spares were needed , the dealers had got rid of them!
Click HERE so see the Austin 20 models that were produced, of course it was also available as a cab & chassis
The Austin 20 Sports model was born out of the winning formular put together by Felix Scriven, a well know racing driver of the early 1920s.His car was known as "Sergeant Murphy" and the Austin Twenties raced by the Factory, namely the "Black Maria" driven the Austins son-in-law Arther Waite
An article written by Scriven about his race car can by read HERE, as can be seen, he really did very little to get the best out of the car, balancing, carburetter and camshaft seemingly the basis. In the article he mentions the opening of the air valve as a means of getting more speed but I notice that he fails to mention how long the valves lasted before they burnt out or perhaps he had not found that out by then?
Well known motoring journalist Micheal Worthington-Williams is not only a world authority on the Austin, he is a member of the V.A.R. UK and proud owner of much loved and used Austin Twenty christened "Arthur". He has over time written a number of Austin articles. One of the articles about the Austin Twenty can be read here
to be continued