“The woman said her husband had restored the car about 15 years ago, and it had been sitting in the garage untouched for the last eight years,” he added. “I hauled it down to my buddy Paul Richardson, and he put a new distributor cap, rotor, plugs and wires on it, and then we changed the oil, and it started right up,” Crowder said.
The American Austin, cousin to the English-built Austin 7, was built in the U.S. for only a few years. Sir Herbert Austin decided the cars should be built in America. A factory in Butler, Penn., built the little cars from 1930 to 1934.
The two-seater is powered by a 46-cubic-inch L-head four-cylinder engine that produced a whopping 14 horsepower at 3200 rpms. Weighing in at just a little more than 1,100 pounds, it didn’t take much power to move the little car that has a 75-inch wheelbase — 16 inches shorter than a Volkswagen Beetle.
Crowder’s model was from the first year of production, when 8,558 of the Austins were sold. The sticker price in 1930 was $465 for the coupe. Sales of the car sagged quite a bit and in the final year, the car sold for only $275.
“I’ve owned about 80 cars in my life, but never one quite like this,” Crowder said. “I took it over to the Friday night cruise in right after I got it, and it drew a huge crowd of people. Mostly, they just wanted to know what it was.
“Then when I started for home, I realized that it really doesn’t have much power, especially on a hill. I called my wife and she came over and followed me home so I wouldn’t roll backward into someone,” Crowder explained with a grin.
The American Austin is also known as a Bantam, which was a short-lived company that tried to revive the car in 1938. Known as Bantams also, these bodies were used in the ’50s and ’60s by hot rodders and drag racers, who put the body on a dragster chassis to make an altered coupe. “There’s a fellow out in Brookville who still races one,” Crowder said.
The American Austin has few comfort features, and doesn’t even have a gas gauge. Crowder said, “I was talking with a Bantam expert on the phone and I mentioned a gas gauge, and the guy said he’s send me one. A few days later I got a paint stir stick in the mail with lines marked on it to stick in the gas tank, which ironically, is mounted on the firewall, right in front of the driver.”
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