Phew!

[Bill Sheehan]

Bob - Over the years you've persisted with highlighting faults in the Austin 7 and you've been refuted every time. It's perhaps wrong for you to quote your own banger because many know it's history - not much of it is the fault of the Austin Motor Company.  How about giving your comments a rest and stop offputting newcomers?  As everyone gets older there's more the need to encourage newbies to keep the movement alive, not chasing them away.   Cheers,  Bill in Oz

[Roland Alcock]

I find nothing wrong with Bob's comments.

Roly

[spannerman]

I like the use.of technical terms? 
So easy to understand !!
Does help a lot for us up north?

[nrzam]

As a newcomer I don't understand much of what Bob says but I don't have a problem with him saying it.

Ian

[Ian Williams]

There is a very long history to this guys, Bob has ruffled may feathers over the years with his at time's uninformed and inflammatory comments, he has in more recent times toned it down a bit I am pleased to say however old scars sometimes run deep. Bill is a very respected and extremely knowledgeable Austin enthusiast who has done a great deal to help others over a great many years so I would not be attacking him for having the courage to speak out.

[David Stepney]

At the risk of adding fuel to the flames rather than pouring oil on troubled waters, I really feel that, for the benefit of those  those who have never driven a Seven and/or who are contemplating owning one, I should defend Austin Seven handling and indeed general road behaviour.

I should say at once that I have no experience of the short chassis cars, having only driven one once and then not for any distance. The three cars that I have owned in my motoring career have all be long chassis cars, two RP saloons and  a special.

I am perhaps lucky insofar as my present RP saloon is a matching numbers car that has not been seriously 'got at' and , given the history of the car that I know, it is entirely possible that the indicated mileage of 97k may quite possibly be genuine.

However, having used the little car as my daily for the last week  it has proved to be as sound and as practical as I remember my first one to be.  Given that, in standard trim, an RP saloon has less horsepower that some garden tractors, they are not fast and one tends to proceed at the car's pace rather than one's own. About 40 to 45 on flat roads, less on hills.

A Seven handles perfectly satisfactorily if one is prepared to take a little time to learn how the car behaves. Providing that  the steering and suspension are in reasonable fettle, on a box saloon, initial understeer changes to roll oversteer, no doubt because of its somewhat perpendicular architecture ( and the fact that the outer rear spring tends to lengthen as it flattens), but I have found that, provided one drives it round a bend, this does not present a problem. Things can get a bit interesting if  you hit a bend on a trailing throttle but not worryingly so.

The brakes are perfectly adequate provided you drive well ahead of yourself, which we should all do anyway.

In short, I had forgotten just what a pleasant place being behind the wheel of a box saloon is. Mine has proved to be well behaved and fun to drive, providing that you are not in a hurry and allow plenty of time for your journey. I have every confidence that this is true of any well maintained touring Seven.

Undoubtedly, there are better cars both of the Seven's era and later,  but that doesn't make them bad cars by any means. Indeed, were I reduced to having to own only one car, I would be perfectly happy  with my Seven.

[Ian Williams]

Well said David, obviously most of us could be accused of bias because we like the little buggers in the first place but why is that? And to take up your last point were there better cars in the same price bracket when the seven was new, perhaps one or two challengers late in production at a time when the seven was already at least a 10 year old design. But think of this, if the challengers were any good why are there not similar numbers of them still on the road as are sevens today, answer, because they simply not such well built cars. Has anyone driven a Morris 8, a car often compared by some with a seven, designed late in the game specifically to try and take some of the seven market. I have and it did not make me want to go out and buy one.

[David Stepney]

Ian,
When I referred to better cars of the Seven's era, I wasn't thinking of the direct competition, but cars like the Riley Nine or the Singer Bantam or indeed even more expensive beasts.

As you rightly point out, the rival cars, such as the Morris Minor and 8, and the Ford 8 came along well after Herbert Austin had started to build his small car for the masses, by which time the Seven's design was getting a bit dated but had nevertheless, caught the motoring public's attention, especially given the Sevens almost eight year head start.

That having been said, however, the rivals were not built in the same quantities as the Seven. There are still quite a few Morris's and Fords about and the survival rate is probably about the same in percentage terms.

I don't think I share your view of build quality. Whilst it is true that Austins were extremely well made cars, both the Morris's and the Fords were sturdily built and worthy cars in their own right (apart from the early fabric bodied side valve Minors).

What The Austin Motor Company did have going for it was the fact that they also built some quite 'up market' cars like the 16 and 20 hp models definitely aimed at the well to do middle classes. Morris built Wolseleys to cater for this market, whilst Fords were not interested in building cars for that sector of the market. So, the advertising slogan; "You buy a car but you invest in an Austin" worked as well for the humble Seven as it did for the more expensive models.

[David.H]

I remember buying a Ford 8 (the bulbous one 1935?) after having a couple of early 30's Sevens in the late 50's. It was absolutely horrible! Fortunately it was stolen by/from an agricultural engineer who was supposed to be welding the back together & who denied all knowledge of having received it!  I cut my losses & bought a 1935 Austin 10 Clifton 2 seater with dickey which was super!

[David Stepney]

I remember that the perpendicular Fords with their double transverse leaf springs were notoriously unstable.

A friend of mine at college owned an E494 Ford Prefect (based on the pre-war Ford 10) which he drove with a considerable amount of verve. One evening several of us had been out to a pub somewhere over by Cilgerran and on the way back he managed to put the car on it's side on a rather sharp bend.

A few minutes later, a rather well-to-do man turned up in a new Landrover and helped us all put the car back on its wheels.
" You're very lucky lads" said the man. " It doesn't seem to have come to much harm." "No." replied my friend. "It never does !"