34 years separating the room mates
Category: Austin Seven Ruby
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Narrow Garage
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Boxing Day Run
A family run out before a boxing day lunch. Using a regular Smith and Sniff route.
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Ruby in Pencil
A nice little drawing of the Ruby.
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Austin Seven Buying Guide
Nice to see the new car magazine Auto Express having a look at an oldie.
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Name the Classic British Cars
I came across this quiz – how’s your knowledge?
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Classic and Sportscar
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon (after regulation barbecue and interesting beer and cider). I settled into some classic car magazine catch up.
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How much was it worth?
Glass’s Guide was first published in 1933 while Austin Sevens were being built and sold. It’s role is to provide a guide to the value of cars in the used market. Here is the August 1947 edition.
Inside the front cover and the rear cover gives a guide to the guide. Consider condition, what does good condition mean and explaining why there might be variations. They also say that they can’t do forecasting as it is “asking too much”!
What does it say about my Austin Seven Ruby?
Maybe this guide was used back in the day to value this car as there are some markings near the appropriate valuation! According to the guide a trade buying price was £160 and selling price £215. Not bad when the original cost new was £120, however there was the war and the consequential inflation in-between. Current advertisements average £235 – always room to haggle. Interestingly, the expected mileage was 78,000.
The guide also gives useful advise on dating a car by its specification. For instance the use of synchromesh on 2nd, 3rd and 4th gears was introduced in July 1934. There is another page that gives details on the chassis number format.
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Seat Belt Laws in the UK
I came across this simple summary of seat belts in classic cars from Footman James.
Until 1966, cars were often made without seat belts. Many manufacturers offered seat belts as extras to the car.
Therefore, if you own a classic car and no seat belts are fitted as standard, you have no legal obligation to have them fitted.
However, you should bear in mind that children under 3 years old will not be able to travel in your vehicle. Children over 3 years of age are only allowed to sit in the back seats.
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Model Austin
A mini version of the Austin.
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Austin Seven Library
One of the best things about the Austin Seven is the wealth of books, current and contemporary, and other material to help you look after a Seven and also learn about its history.
Here is what I managed to acquire. Some came with the car, but most I had to hunt around for and found on eBay or from specialists. I liked the garage poster that gives you the key servicing information, I wish I could get this for every car I’ve looked after.
The old books are brilliant. It is clear that it was the norm for an owner to do the work himself and the normal handbook tells him how to do pretty much everything from normal maintenance to more serious work.
Not only do they tell you how to maintain your Austin Seven, but also how to drive it.
Some of the old handbooks were particularly useful. They made sure you didn’t miss any key regular serviceable items.
There are written with language familiar, but with a style of its age. The written works describes jobs rather than using diagrams, without any ambiguity or lack of information. Some words that we use today were clearly not in use in the 1930s.
The newer documents reference older material to allow you to identify what car you have to find and order the right parts.
Researching and learning about the car is almost as good as looking after it and taking it out for a drive.
