The Austin A70 Hereford of 1950 to 1954 and its smaller sister the A40 Somerset of 1952 to 1954 are relatively well known – but the A70 Hampshire is almost forgotten today. Perhaps with good reason: it was not thought to be very popular, with only 35,262 built from 1948 to 1950, when the Hereford replaced it. The truth is somewhat different: the Hereford was hardly a great success and took four years to achieve only 50,421 sales, whereas the Somerset sold 173,000 units in only two years.
The A70 Hampshire was conceived as a competitor for the Standard Vanguard of the day. It replaced the Austin 16. With its steering column gear change it could easily accommodate three people on its front bench seat, but there was limited room for back-seat passengers. It was built at Longbridge.
The A70 Hampshire was initially only available as a saloon, but in the period of its manufacture, just after World War II, “woodies” were popular estate versions of cars. Their advantage lay in the fact that they were classed as commercial vehicles and thus allowed owners to receive a larger petrol allocation in the years of rationing just after the war. There was another reason for the popularity of woodies. Post-war shortage of materials, mainly steel and aluminium, led many companies to convert their car chassis using wooden frames. Austin decided to enter this growing market, and the Austin 16 was its first model to receive such conversions, to create wood-framed estate cars. Although such a model could be ordered from the factory, Austin subcontracted the work to Papworth Industries, a carpentry workshop attached to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge that gave work to TB sufferers to help them to do useful work while convalescing. Frank Jordon, its manager, travelled to Longbridge and convinced Austin management that he could deliver, and returned with an order for 250 estates based on the Austin 16 chassis BW1. He completed the order ahead of time and to a high quality, and Austin placed a further order for another 250 vehicles. With this success, Austin repeated the exercise with the A70 Hampshire chassis and ordered over 900 from Papworth Industries. At this time, the name Countryman was introduced to denote an Austin estate car or shooting brake.
When, however, the A70 Hampshire was replaced in 1950 by the A70 Hereford, it was announced as a 4-door saloon or coupé only. Therefore, if a customer ordered an A70 Countryman they received an estate based on the old Hampshire with its restricted rear passenger space.
Images courtesy of Guy Loveridge
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