Austin Motor Company..Heres to Beauty (heritage motoring films)

[@geoffnoyes520]

I owned and drove daily a 1936 Austin seven ruby, as late as 1969/70, l was a a teenager, here in New Zealand. My first set of wheels, l loved the freedom it gave me, l was still a school boy! :-).

[@bobkirby2603]

Now you know what I did in my previous job before forced retirement came along. Thank you Jack loved watching it. Even found some one using a crank gouge still got mine in my tool box black made from timber . Take care all the best Bob.

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

Hi Bob. glad you liked it, those early uploads still get loads of views, in fact they are always in the top ten views, it was all Austin seven stuff then, the channels diversified a bit since then, take care😀

[@olwens1368]

Enchanting look into the past. So much care and effort in every car.

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

Interesting to see exactly how the bodywork was assembled

[@Mercmad]

Back in the 60's my dad bought my mum an Austin big 7, the model after the Ruby. Dad had seen it parked on a side street and approached the owner to see if it was for sale. The old boy sold it to dad for $75 . We got in and drove it home some 150 miles on three cylinders. Mum had that car for years and it was actually in very good condition with an ummarked interior and zero rust. 35 MPH seemed to be the best cruising speed and mum could tell if we had been driving too fast in it because it would need water when she checked it. Happy Days!

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

Check out. Sam's investment staring Stanley Holloway, it's an advertising feature for the Austin big seven

[@andyc3856]

Fantastic film of a bygone era. Fascinating to watch. All those skills and craftsmanship long gone now. Glad a few of those wonderful old cars survive to this day.

[@robertwoodliff2536]

These craftsmen may have shuffled of this mortal.,but these skills are still out there.,not necessarily in this country..The shaping machine will have been lost ( thank christ ) .... to be replaced by a 5 axis milling machine....and some poor sod attempting to make sense of a C A D package., and scratch their heads to try and decide if the tool path will hit the job fixing..The skills will now be in a very few hands., here., who will have found them through trial and error ., 'cos the apprentice structure that mainly trained those to be found on this film.,will have been swept away., with the., we can buy it from abroad morality of 300 odd toss wads in a mocked up gothic building on a trickle of a river.... just up from Brixton..Oddly.,the skills are needed to fettle a gun barrel or a car.,and it's the means of production are in the hands of other nations.,so are the abilities to win the argument if push comes to shove..300 or so self-aggrandizing bilge merchants will have lost us the argument.,claiming the "free market" works.,while picking ni on 3 times the national average wage out of the public purse., and agreeing that they represent us..Are we only ever to be lead by ponces and donkeys.?

[@av8bvma513]

03:20 "...now that the die has been cast..." Portentous words indeed!

[@dogphlap6749]

That was nice. I'm old enough to remember those cars on the road when I was a kid, a near neighbour had one. I loved the comment about the body being accurate to a fraction of an inch ha ha (7/8" is a fraction of an inch). My father had a planer like the one shown, a little smaller and hand powered, a sort of poor mans milling machine but nowhere near as versatile. The advent of industrial electronics changed everything.

[@guyjonson6364]

To a tenth of a millimeter

[@gilzor9376]

@@guyjonson6364 UK was still on the Imperial System, British Govt did not endorse the Metric System till 1965.

[@NickRatnieks]

Yes, that was Longbridge... and while this film was being created, an Austin "shadow factory" was being constructed nearby to build aircraft and other weapons of war. It is hard to imagine the contrast- checking out paint durability on one had while judiciously tooling up for war on the other. While my car was being repaired last week, I went into the town and one of those Austin Ruby cars came past- it was on a trailer a "barn find" ready to be rebuilt. When I was a kid such cars- the Austin 7, Morris 8, Ford 8 and Popular and Prefect and similar cars could be found all over the place- dumped in the countryside! I have a photo of my sisters sitting on the roof of one- it was taken by my dad outside Wickham in Hampshire. I didn't have to travel far for such delights as the Corporation had a huge car dump outside my school. I have two of those winged Austin badges- one was off a Sheerline -and I also had the hub caps. Sadly, the old man chucked out my hub cap collection and I had some very nice Jaguar examples.

[@ADEN1961]

Incredible cars 80 years later spare parts are Amazingly available!

[@chriswilliams-lilley5771]

Some of the pre-war heavy equipment used to stamp out panels ‘still’ exist and probably used by JLR in Solihull. Marvelous!!

[@Replevideo]

A friend of mine had an Austin 7. One night 4 of us went for an evening out in it. As it laboured up a steep hill in the town centre, a guy on a bicycle overtook us.

[@Scuba72Chris]

Haha, I can believe it!

[@MrDaiseymay]

@@Scuba72Chris not sure about the '7', but Austins of this range usually had 4 gears, unlike rivals Morris, which had only 3. I used to have one, and THAT was embarrassing on some hills.

[@MrDaiseymay]

@Fredrik Larsson most likely

[@augustinedennis4865]

Replevideo my dad had a post war 1946 new Austin eight.Upon ascending the Wicklow mountains with my mother and me aboard,my large uncle leapt from the stalling ‘8 and we made it,about 300 ft to the top.My father was annoyed,as he was convinced that his pride and joy for which he had waited until WW2 was over to purchase it,could have carried a small army up the same hill.Unfortunately the post war car wasn’t a patch on the beutyfull car in the excellent video.

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

Yes they are a bit slow on the hills , there is a hill in Cornwall where Austin sevens would reverse up the hill, because reverse was just that lower ratio than first

[@brianparker663]

All these old Austin films feature female drivers - no prejudices. Nice to see.

[@joolsfreeman4359]

To highlight how easy to drive they were meant to be, a bit patronising really...see even a woman can do it.

[@wordsmith52]

@@joolsfreeman4359 And it seems they were only expected or allowed to drive the smaller models...

[@r1273m]

A really fascinating film though someone should have had a word with that sprayer, turning up to work without a tie! CAD/CAM have changed everything; if those guys could see modern production methods now. Thanks for posting.

[@anilachar323]

Almost a hundred years ago... Wonder if 3 generations later, they will see a clip of today's cars being made, with a mixture of sentimental amusement and wonder...

[@Mercmad]

In the carbon free world demanded by the gretards they will be watching their screens by firelight , if they are allowed fire that is.

[@robertwoodliff2536]

Thank you for putting this up..

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

Hi Robert, I'm pleased you enjoyed the film it was one of my earliest uploads👍

[@biddlelove2135]

The pre muzzer years!

[@bigears4426]

Very skilled workforce in those days

[@davidmann8254]

Fantastic! I’d always wondered. Thank you for posting

[@peteacher52]

That was my Austin 7 being assembled. His name was Oscar.

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

👍👍

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

They all have names don't they ,once they have names they become one of the family😃

[@andrewmussett7811]

In case anyone is interested, the first piece of background music is Song of Paradise by Reginald King. I can't identify what follows, but the final one is Concert Waltz from The Haunted Ballroom by Geoffrey Toye, which Reginald King also arranged for solo piano.

[@MrDaiseymay]

OK--it's 75 years ago, but I can't help laughing at the commentery , music, seductive filmed scenes, and ,the fact that this isn't the unique and flowing lines of Bugatti, but a box on wheels, that looks like all the other boxes. Without the usual radiator badge, it could be any one of the 95 % of cars on the road in the pre-war years.

[@smudger671]

The same applies to modern cars - absolutely no originality in design. Remove the badge and it's hard to tell one from another.

[@beaufighter245]

@@smudger671 very true. Just another boring eurobox.

[@curbmassa]

The box-on-wheels design, interestingly enough, allows enough space to fit people inside. Form follows function.

[@johndavey72]

Great stuff! l love you tube! Great gas welding techniques and the spot welding was unexpected. The design studio! Of course now you think how could they design something that looks so old and antiquated straight from the drawing board! The ruby was the first project that l took on, in about 1966/67. It came to nothing as l never did become a mechanic so it never ran. Think it went for scrap sadly. HEY HO!

[@Mercmad]

@Iain Botham look closer, there is a massive heat sink on either side of the weld. this both clamps the steel down and prevents the steel from heating across the panel which creates distortion. As a restorer I wish I could such a thing everyday.

[@OMB-hq6lm]

Welding while wearing a necktie. Crazy times back then.

[@MrDaiseymay]

a different crazy now

[@smudger671]

When I started work back in the early 70's it was pretty common for tradesmen (especially older ones) to wear a tie with overalls.

[@metalman4141]

I started work in 1977 as a sheet metal worker and most of the old boys wore ties and shoes that gleamed , different generation then but boy they knew their stuff. I learnt so much from talented blokes as they were and ended up in the same trade fo 40 years.

[@bobjackson4720]

Those cars looked attractive (in their way) but they were a maintenance disaster and broke down all the time. We are so lucky that today's cars are so much more reliable. As a kid in the fifties we had cars like that.

[@adeh503]

No bondo here, if you made a mistake you'd get your arse kicked by all the fellas who'd done there bit before you

[@artisansportsman8950]

Big engine & a set of wide alloys & you got a nice car.

[@parrotraiser6541]

All that emphasis on "curves" and "flowing" contrasting with something as relentlessly perpendicular as an Austin 7! One of Austin's colour consultants was Kay Petre, the racing driver. She was notorious for promoting colours she'd found in clothing, which would start to fade almost as soon as they were applied.

[@CZ350tuner]

Back then British cars were made of all British sourced materials and components by British workers. The supply chains were never more than a hundred miles long. 2019 and Vauxhall reckon that they won't be able to produce cars because we are extracting ourselves from the corrupt clutches of the European Union (Brexit) because their modern British made cars hardly any British sourced materials and components.

[@Zaranathax]

Really? Where do you think the mahogany came from to make the patterns?

[@bobbowling2979]

To be hoped they kept the patterns safe somewhere, post brexit we may need them to kick start a new car industry.

[@Zaranathax]

@@davis7099 The OP said 'all British sourced materials', I was correcting his error. Mahogany used to make moulds and for trimming cars would have come from the tropics of S America - it doesn't grow in the UK. Plywood, when used, would typically contain tropical hardwood. Whether it was manufactured in the UK or imported in the 30s I don't know. The ash used for bodywork would, I imagine, be sourced in the UK although there was a lot of timber imported as the first world war had accounted for a lot of domestic woodland. The OP seemed to me to be heading down the track of things being better in the old days because it was all British made stuff - that just isn't true. And of course we can expect a significant number of people making those Austins to be foreign born.

[@jackkruese9929]

Bob Bowling Yes but we won’t be kick starting a new car industry post brexit. I can assure you. You need skilled people, a supply chain, deep pockets for R&D, political will, long term plans and huge available investment. All of which the UK has lacked for decades. We re a second rate country which will soon be made all too clear.

[@curbmassa]

@@davis7099 There was a thing called The British Empire as I recall. Just sayin'....

[@SSGTA440]

They were real good cars....but curves in the body? As square and symetrical as you can get....but then most auto designers just couldn't fight their ways out of that square shape...except Chrysler with the Airflow, at that time....

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

They made what the public wanted , when the ruby was introduced lord Austin was upset that the days of the big chrome radiator had gone, but realised that they had to move foreward, but as you say it was another 20 years before we in Britain started wanting more style in our cars.

[@SSGTA440]

@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586 Yeah, but here in North America, I can only think of the post war cars that were stodgy and had no appeal as well....until the beginning of the 50's...that's when things got curvy and nice and low. Here's some trivia....do you know why Chrysler products kept the "cab roof line" of their cars higher up than the Fords and GM cars...it was to allow people that wore hats to get more headroom....true story..

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

Yes I can believe that, the American influence in styling did not start filtering in here untill the late fifties, we then started getting cars with Finn,s and chrome, the fords going more American only smaller, Austin's on the other hand turned to the Italian,s with the Farina range, it made the old styles go out of fashion overnight.

[@wordsmith52]

@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586 It's worth noting that the Austin A30 (and I think the A40 Somerset) had an Italian designer working on it in the very early 1950s. A clay prototype of a proposed new Austin car was produced in 1939 - it took styling cues from the then American designs and looked very similar to the Austin Devon that eventually followed in 1947. Obviously the war held it up. Ford UK cars also emulated American design in the 1930s, albeit scaled down in size, e.g. the Ford V8 Pilot. The general lagging behind the USA by 5 to 10 years continued for some time, until the 1970s, when the USA started to emulate some European design trends and styling.

[@jackflashvintagemotoring7586]

This happened with motorbikes too, engines designed in the 1930s used in some 50s bikes, but it was transport and we needed it outdated or not. as too designers, I remember Farina coming in to do the A40 and Westminster's.

[@davids8449]

Life is strange... If all dies and presses were kept Austin vintage cars would have practically no value.... people would say not another vintage car and probably collect vintage bed casters instead

[@freesaxon6835]

Nice, craft working is now almost lost, so is the country via a tsunami of illegal cheap labour