why an Austin seven

[robert regan]

I think we are all more than aware that nostalgia is a big part of what drives us in our hobby,or mania as some people like to call it, I just thought that I would put down a few musings on the subject to see if anything would seem familiar to anyone.  My earliest and quite vivid memory is of my grandfather or grancha as we say here in south Wales, driving me down the back lane and stopping to go back into the house for something he had left behind, and leaving me in the car with the engine running stood on the back seat a very small four year old and watching the key fob sway with the rhythm of of the engine. this is such a strong memory for me it almost plays like a video in my mind and the car was almost certainly a RP saloon.  Where we live if your not going up an hill you are probably going down one, not the best place to be driving old sevens that had seen some neglect, I remember several occasions being dumped out of the car with my 15 year old uncle and my nan  and told to push because off the clutch slipping on really steep climbs, I can,t drive any of those places now without thinking about the antics that took place there.  In the late 1950s this car was stripped of parts and left in the lane behind the house and as kids was our plaything for several years,  it was replaced with a very nice Ruby from the local Austin agent Stan hughes of Bargoed , my nan used to be very proud of this car and talked about it often when I was young and she always used to say that the car was reboarded as a condition of the sale and being so young I always thought that they had put a new floor in it !!!. The couple of photos I remember of the Ruby are long lost so I don,t know the Registration number  but if you have an old brown or green log book with the name Robert Albert Chidgey in it please let me know so stay as safe as you can and keep going best regards Rob.

[Rpm]

Nice story Robert, , I was recently speaking to an elderly neighbour who remembers the elderly chap and his wife who once lived in my current house and remembered them having an Austin 7 in their garage and referred to it as Nippy. I asked was it low and open sporty looking, he replied Yes!, I stated he wasn't speaking as nippy being fast but the Austin model. So if you own a NIPPY with the old type green logbook with the previous owner as Mr ANDREW ARTHUR , I now live at the address also with a Nippy.
RPM

[John Mason]

Not Austin related but when I was 16 and 17 I used to help out with a group of chaps who raced Stock Cars. They all lived in and around Nottingham and every few weeks in the summer months we would go to Manchester to race. Our transport an old Bedford petrol engined lorry with trailer boiled on the Derbyshire hills. When travelling this way even now I can remember where all the ponds and brook’s are that we used to refill the radiator. I can also recall having to adjust the brakes for the return home.

John Mason

[Rpm]

Happy days John, Least in the countryside things change very little. Whereas in the east end of London where I grew up, it's unrecognisable.
Rob Martin.

[Ivor Hawkins]

My love affair with Austin Sevens started in the early sixties, my family comes from a little village called St Ippollytts in Hertfordshire and we used to drive to and from Willesden in North West London and passed the Rush Green scrap yard where you would seen box saloons, Rubies, Big Sevens, Morris 8s, Ford Y types and Austin 10s piled one on top of the other, all taken off the road at a stroke with the introduction of the MOT test...arriving in Willesden you would see the same pre war cars abandoned in the dilapidated residential roads and I wanted to save them all from the crusher.

I spent many a happy hour lying on my back in an upside down big old thirties saloon in Rush Green scrap yard withdrawing a half shaft off an adjacent car in the stack and that old car smell is still with me today and when I poke my nose into a very original thirties car on a summers day, it all comes flooding back.

I’ve done my part by saving as many Austin Sevens as I can and haven’t sent one to the crusher yet!