Australian Car Number

[JonE]

I made a list of all the CHA1 numbers that I could find in the Chassis Register together with their Chassis numbers:
15013  CHA1-847
19834  CHA1-830
27751  CHA1-1758
29386  CHA1-2491
34326  CHA1-2970
44403  CHA1-4189
51146  CHA1-4729
45568  CHA1-4832
48088  CHA1-5936
49918  CHA1-6664
            CHA1-6692
            CHA1-8191
53723  CHA1-8531
55342  CHA1-9273

Mark, it seems odd that your car doesn't seem to fit into this list in the 'right' place. Chassis no.48088 is also an Australian Chummy.

David

Ok, so if two of those are Mulliners, what potentially distinguishes those cars from all the others which 'just' have an Austin car number? Were there a majority of Mulliners which were Austin-tweaked in house, and a few special ones which were properly bespoke and done off site? Or could they thus be development cars.

[Steve Bryant]

My car was an Australian car and the car number also appears to be engraved not stamped.

As far as i know the plates are original.
Stephen

Steve - is 1624, presumably the body number, stamped on your transmission tunnel and possibly hinges?

JonE, the only  number I've seen on the car body was stamped on the tunnel but was 49101
   

Stephen

[JonE]

Steve - might it be that floor is perhaps remade, from the fixings we can see? As per the comment about David's CHA list above, your car being "Australian" still suggests that it left Britain as a car (and perhaps has or had an EX mark painted on the rear crossmember of the chassis) because it has an Austin car number. What was it when new?, as we may be able to work out whether that other stamped figure WAS the body number from other numerals in the range.

Sadly AD Vans have no recording of the stamped body number on the Register - a heads up for owners to get on with it! So that doesn't help you. But what you hve recourse to is just ordering the heritage certificate from Gaydon with all your specification from new, because yours is an A9 car. Or you can just check the model/car type for 6 quid - a complete bargain.
You can also go and inspect yourself for free if you make an appointment. Of course, you won't find a body number recorded but you may find whether the body was changed, for instance.

[Steve Bryant]

Steve - might it be that floor is perhaps remade, from the fixings we can see? As per the comment about David's CHA list above, your car being "Australian"  still suggests that it left Britain as a car (and perhaps has or had an EX mark painted on the rear crossmember of  the chassis) because it has an Austin car number. What was it when new?, as we may be able to work out whether that other stamped figure WAS the body number from other numerals in the range.

Sadly AD Vans have no recording of the stamped body number on the Register - a heads up for owners to get on with it! So that doesn't help you. But what you hve recourse to is just ordering the heritage certificate from Gaydon with all your specification from new, because yours is an A9 car. Or you can just check the model/car type for 6 quid - a complete bargain.
You can also go and inspect yourself for free if you make an appointment. Of course, you won't find a body number recorded but you may find whether the body was changed, for instance.

JonE, according to the information I received from British Heritage record holders, my car was exported to Australia as a Chassis Scuttle unit in July 1929. The car as purchased had a steel chummy body on it missing a lot of stuff. A lot of the car had been poorly restored with pop rivets and numerous types of screws and badly welded patches etc. I decided to save the original body until I can work out what is needed to return it to its original state, so for the interim I bought a John Heath replica van body kit to allow me to get the car on the road as a van. The intent is to eventually put it back to being a Chummy:
   
Stephen

[Hedd_Jones]

strikes me that a chassis/scuttle unit is likely to also include a floor/part floor, given the scuttle is essentially mounted on the front of the floor. This may explain why Ians Chummy had the AD number on the floor

[Mike Costigan]

I agree, and in all probability the floor was complete back to the seat mountings, or even the rear upstanding for the rear seat.

[JonE]

I'm getting confused now. (Lovely pics by the way Steve). An AD number would never have a letter prefix that early on - it would just be a number and it would always be in the tunnel surely, linking just to the body? There don't seem to be many AD body numbers recorded at all on the register. Naive question but would these have separate body number series i.e. things listed as AD Tourer and AD Van?

What are other people's thoughts on the 49101? It feels to me like it doesn't date from 1929. And what about thoughts on the 1624? I suppose it might be seen to link with the other bodies in the register when comparing similar.. if we had more bodies recorded to extrapolate.

It is one of the present difficulties of the Register that whilst it has former and present registrations (not really terribly important in the grander scheme of things) we may be missing an original body on the formal record linking to original stats... lost partially in another body type?

[Mike Costigan]

I think the 49101 stamping is a complete red herring! It is neither in the usual position on the propshaft tunnel, nor is the orientation usual for an Austin factory stamp. Steve's other numbers, A9-309 and 87642 are consistent for a 1929 car, and the over-stamping of 1624 is presumably the Australian body /assembly identity. Could the 49101 in fact be 10167, or better still 70167? Even then I would not expect a body stamping so close to the seat mounts.

As for AD body numbers, I have never come across a Seven of the late 1920s with any body number stamping - those that I have seen with any stamping at all have either had a chassis number or a car number, but never a body number. No doubt others have seen a body number, in which case I will have learned something new! As for 'AD' vans, forget it! First of all I believe there is only one genuine 'AD' survivor: that is the Marsh Butchers' van; every other 'genuine' van that I have investigated has turned out to be a modern (usually a Heath) body. But in any case, none of the C-cab vans were manufactured at Longbridge (99% were built by Thomas Startin) and so would not have gone down the production line at the point when the body was stamped.

[Ian Williams]

My post may have added confusion I was talking about car numbers not body numbers, I posted AD ???? by mistake it was intended purely as generic Car number and should have been something like A5 or A6 or such like not AD! It is so easy for a typo to add confusion. In my experience Austin sevens have Chassis number, body number, car number and engine number affixed to them, they are all different numbers with the exception of the late cars where the chassis number is used as a car number but with the car type prefix i.e ARQ ******, earlier cars appear to have had a Ledger number prefix which is what I was referring to i.e A4, A5, A6 etc

[Tony Press]

Chassis Numbers, Engine Numbers and Car Numbers were issued and recorded by the factory.
 
The export chassis to Australia arrived with the radiator, bonnet, scuttle, guards and floor pan to be bodied locally by a diverse range of body builders.

As far as I know the tunnel was not stamped with a body number and each builder could stamp their own quite unrelated body number or not as it took them.