Austin A70 Hampshire

[angrydicky]

LOB is a Brum number so it may have been registered new to Austin Longbridge.

It's a miracle it's made it this far.

I agree. The last owner bought it in 1959 for £285. He took out a HP agreement to buy it from a used car dealer in Nottingham. He then owned it until 2018 when he died. It seems to have been kept under a tarp in his back garden since the late 80s, hence why it's in such poor condition. The drivers side was parked against the overgrown boundary fence which is why that side is considerably worse.

There do seem to be a disproportionate number of surviving Hampshires that appear to be factory registered. I wonder if that's because they were slow sellers and they had a lot kicking around Longbridge, which were offered on favorable terms on the Employee Purchase Scheme. This is quite a late car, registered 19th December 1950.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

An excellent story, one which makes it difficult to scrap. I'd feel so guilty. I guess all you can do is make it roadworthy and tidy it up.

[angrydicky]

Oh yeah, the old bloke was obviously very attached to it. The boot and inside the car were packed full of rare parts, most of which still had the price labels on where he'd obviously collected them from autojumbles (Newark most likely). He obviously intended to restore it but it never happened and he popped his clogs without really doing anything with it. His nephew then inherited it but he never did anything with it either, apart from move it from its resting place and store it outside at a couple of locations. When I got it it was full of water and horribly mouldy inside with most things seized up, I felt so sorry for it.
There's quite a lot of paperwork with it too.

[brandersnatch]

That looks dreadful. Well played.

[SiC]

Bloody hell, RBJ is showing some empathy!
Has hell just frozen over?

[Scruffy Bodger]

Covid/fever, he's obviously not thinking straight.

[Hooli]

It does sound like it'd be rude to scrap this with all that effort by the old guy who had it.

[angrydicky]

Fortunately, Austins of this age have separate chassis, this one is almost perfect just requiring some very small repairs at the front. It's holding the rotten body together.
I'm also an experienced welder and fabricator. There's no way it would ever be cost effective to pay someone to weld it up, the bill would run into tens of thousands.
I will do it, I'm still relatively young (and I'd wanted a Hampshire since I was a kid) but I did tell the guy it won't be quick, as I have a few* other cars on the go. He was fine with that and knows that the best chance of his uncle's car living on is with me. Even the ACCC guys saw it as a breaker, with spares worth £1000. But I'm too sentimental for that.
I've already got it under cover and dried it out, and have started work and got quite a bit done already.

[cros]

One big upside to mending the Hampshire is that you'll end up with a usable vehicle. The engine is a very respectable design for its day and no stranger to moving large lumps around. I've had a couple of LD vans with them in and I'm sure you'll be able to keep up with modern traffic without having to resort to a vag- implant.
My only encounter with this series of cars was a local blacksmith who used a Hereford pick up to carry his tools when shoeing horses too far away to be walked to the shop. It was rotten as a peach and I always expected his anvil and portable forge to go through the floor but somehow it held up until his farming customers had got themselves a tractor. (For the youngsters here shoeing didn't always mean kicking the shit out of somthing.)

[angrydicky]

The interior was really damp and mouldy when I got it, having had water leaking in for years but unable to dry out due to the tarp over the roof! However, it appeared to be all there.

The carpets were disgusting, I guess some kind of animal had been in there as there were lots of droppings and small bones! It could have been something quite big as the rust holes in the floors are quite big! The carpets went straight in the bin.
I cleaned the seats, first with a vacuum, then wet wipes then Gliptones liquid leather cleaner and conditioner.

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This was in the back window.

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The headlining was covered in thick mould. These are very delicate and all I could really do was wipe it over with wet wipes. But it’s just about savable, I think.

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I took the back seat base out. The foam base had soaked up water like a sponge and I had to take it into the house and dry it in front of the radiator over the course of a few days. The only damage was the usual brittle rexine on the sides which is to be expected. The leather is fine.

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The original window blind was still present and intact, but the string that used to operate it from the dashboard has succumbed to age.

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The seats came up really well for a good clean, there’s barely a mark on them and it’s testament to the quality of materials used pre-BMC that they have survived so well against the odds.