You really never know what you’re going to come across on your day to day travels, and you never know what you’re going to learn. When I first stumbled upon The Gabel Collection, I never thought that tucked away in the back yard, all by itself, I would find a 1934 Austin 7. More specifically, I didn’t think I would find what’s left of one.
This Austin 7, also known as the “Baby Austin”, was made in
the UK by the Austin
Motor Company. Baby it was
indeed. This car only had a wheelbase of
six feet and three inches. It was
designed to be an economy car, so for that reason, it had a 747cc
engine that made a neck-breaking 10.5 horsepower! That was enough to eventually power the car
up to its top speed of about
50mph, and allowed it to get an impressive 40 miles per gallon.
This particular car however has no engine or
transmission. As a matter of fact, it
doesn’t have much of anything: no roof, no interior, not much floor paneling left,
and it’s missing a bunch of other things that I’m sure an Austin 7 expert could
point out easily.
Even through the car doesn’t have an interior, it allows us
to see the old school wooden skeleton of the car. The last license plate is still on the car
from 1956, and it has what the owner says is the original key. A closer look at the key shows that it is a
GM key. Perhaps it is an original copy
of the original key.
The current owner found this car in shed. Funny how most American Muscle cars are
called “barn finds”, but this little British car is small enough to be called a
“shed find”. Anyway, the owner of the
shed didn’t own the car. The car’s owner
left it there, said he would be back, and never came back. The shed owner found out the car owner had
died., and the shed owner wanted his shed back.
Now, the current owner has the car after purchasing it off the shed
owner. Did you follow all that?
The current owner had plans to resort the car with a
different engine. However, this car and
its frame are so small, the only thing he found that could fit under the hood,
would be the original engine. An
original engine for the car proved to cost too much to make this restore feasible. For now, this car sits rotting in style as a
rusty shell of its former glory.
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