When someone says 'hot rod' the obvious thing to think is of fenderless 32' Fords or maybe T-buckets. The thing is hot rodding didn't only happen in America, while our US based friends were hacking around their pre-war cars we were doing the same on this side of the Atlantic. Some people were lucky enough to have American cars to play with, others took to modifying what they had at hand.
The Austin 7 has been the basis for many cars and many specials, but right now I'd like to look at some of the rodding people have done with it. The first is this fantastic picture from the Time Travel DVD archive, taken in 1962, of a chap standing very proudly next to his Austin 7 Hot Rod :
This image originally got me to searching for more, the potential was there in 1962 to take the car further, after a bit of browsing and searching I found that whilst a lot of modifiers had gone off in the sports special direction with the 750 Motorclub, there were people that decided hot rodding was the way forwards. It is interesting to note that I had to go back across the Atlantic to find some more small Austin action.
On the legendary H.A.M.B I found pictures of Austin Bantams, the early cars from American Bantam are Austin 7s built under license in the USA. Of those pictures one really stuck out for me:
It shows the full potential for a street rodding style on the little Austin. The UK isn't without its stand out Austin based hot rods, Pip Biddlecombe's Rubellion is a very well known car on the UK Hot Rodding scene and has been around for many years, in many different guises. To get a better idea of how much it has changed over time have a look at this thread on the NSRA forums.
Here it is now :
Whilst it clearly has a lot of potential and many Sevens were built it seems odd that we aren't swimming in a sea of modified Austins. It certainly got my creative juices going for a cost effective bit of rodding in my life.
Posted on: February 23, 2009 05:17