Chummy Identification

[Adrian Payne]

Evening Everyone.
Through the A7CA I have just received the request below from Valentin in Spain. Can anyone help with the identification?
Many thanks.
Adrian.

" I have recently owned an Austin Seven registered in Spain in 1927, with chassis number 31572. Is it possible to correctly identify my car, model year of manufacture etc?"

   

[Mike Costigan]

That looks to me like it may have started life as an R saloon; the windscreen pillars and the length of the rear body are wrong for a Longbridge-built tourer. However, as we have found with other Spanish Sevens, there were obviously many skilled craftsmen who managed to re-purpose Sevens over the years and it will be hard to positively identify how the car was originally.

[Chris Garner]

Adrian,
Impossible to say what it started out as. It's a real mish mash of items. Could have been an R type but who knows without further information.
Love the tell tales on the top of the headlights - very ingenious!
Chris.
R-type Register.

[Martin Prior]

In the last few years, Spain has been the source of many recycled Sevens of widely varying quality. It seems that these date from times of great economic difficulty following the Civil and Second World wars. They were reconstructed from scavenged parts, not necessarily of Austin origin, combined with local coachbuilding. One or two of the better efforts have been confused (my opinion) with rare works prototypes that were somehow exiled to Spain; this one is obviously not of that standard, but is an interesting piece of history.

31572 would date from February/March 1927. It would be very interesting to know more about it, but some more numbers are needed. Please forward http://a7ca.org/downloads/QuoteThisNumber.pdf to the owner and let's see what they can find.

[Tony Griffiths]

One thing that often survives unchanged - or at least with original instruments - is the dashboard. A picture of that might help? Quite clearly the hood and frame are "home-made" and not ex-factory, so helping to strengthen Mike's original deduction.

[Nick Salmon]

Has a charm of its own but is undoubtedly a 'desayuno del perro'.

[AustinWood]

Is the identity stamped on the transmission tunnel?
I think it looks like a cut down 'R' saloon.

[Adrian Payne]

Many thanks everyone for your comments.
I will report back and see if we can get some further details.
Adrian.