Austin Classics

Welcome to Austin Classics

To all visitors either new or anyone who has visited the site before, we extend a warm welcome to you and hope that you find the site useful.

I originally started this site back in the summer of 2005 with the hope that it would become a valuable community resource for owners of classic Austin cars of all varieties. I had intended that we would have an active community forum where people could discuss anything relating to ownership of a classic Austin car, however for whatever reason this has not been the case.

I started this site because my wife and I bought a 1935 Austin 10 Litchfield in June 2005 having no previous experience with car maintenance let alone classic car maintenance with all the challenges that brings. Being of the internet generation I perhaps naively thought that there would be plenty of useful sites on the internet with information about classic car maintenance and such like. Although there are plenty of sites around, the majority of them focus on either recent popular classics such as MGB's or luxury cars like jaguar. Needless to say I was a little disappointed by the apparent lack of information about Austin's on the internet and decided I would start a site. We also joined the Austin Ten Drivers Club that proved useful for many things but also didn't prove to be able to satisfy my thirst for knowledge on the subject.

Over the last couple of years I have realised that many of the owners of classics are either seasoned enthusiasts who have many years of experience in their chosen classic or are owners who have a specialist garage maintain their car for them. As a result there seems to be very few people like me who are inexperienced but keen to learn. The long time owners have learnt a lot and just take their knowledge for granted and assume that it is common knowledge. It is quite common to read a letter in the club magazine that says something like "your gudgeon pin is loose" and it is assumed that everyone knows what that means. So I have spent the last couple of years buying every vintage mechanic book I can find and reference material relating to Austin's, Lucas electrical and Zenith carbuettors I could lay my hands on, it has been a steep learning curve but very interesting.

We now have 2 Austin 10's and I have learnt an immense amount about motor mechanics during this time and I hope to share what I can with others, I hope it will be especially useful for others like me who are new to this interest. I can not claim to be an authority, but as I set out knowing nothing I am looking through the eyes of a novice and hope that will prove useful in the information I share.

The main things I hope to achieve on this site at the moment are ...

Write an idiots guide Handbook to the Austin 10.
Provide a potted history of the Austin Motor Company.
Make available electronic copies of documents that are now out of copyright.
Write a blog (Web Diary) about the experiences with our cars.
Provide a blog facility for web site users to post their own Austin motoring & maintenance experiences.

Anyone who is interested in helping out or would just like to have their own Austin blog to ramble about what you are doing with your car please get in touch. This site is interactive, so comments can be left on most pages, so if you have something to say please comment on it.

I created an Austin Classics mailing list, where people can subscribe by e-mail and messages are sent to everyone on the list for discussion. I thought this may work better than a web forum as people check their e-mail much more regularly than they do visit web sites, but alas this hasn't worked. It seems that there just are not enough interested people, perhaps you have some better ideas, let me know what you think, and please try and join in as I would like to see some interest in the site so that I know I'm not just talking to myself in a darkened room.

Thanks
Darren