Start with what the Austin 8 is: a 2-door sedan (car) / saloon / 4-door sedan (car) / saloon / 2-door, 2 -seat tourer / 2-door 4-seat tourer / 2-door van with 900 , built from 1939 to 1948, when streamlining and independent suspension were arriving together. What it meant takes a little longer.
How it came about
The Austin 8 is a small car which was produced by Austin between 1939 and 1948. Launched on 24 February 1939, production continued into the war until 1943. Approximately 9,000 - 9,500 of the wartime Austin models were two-seater military 8AP tourers produced for the armed services and government, and the rest were four light saloons, six light saloons, two and four seater tourers and vans. After World War II, the model was made from 1945 until 1948. By the late 1930s, sales of Austin's big seller, the Austin 7, were declining and the 1938 addition to the range of the 900 cc "Big 7" did little to fill the demand, as despite its larger engine its suspension and handling were still rooted in its early 1920s origins. A restyled and re-engineered range of cars had started to appear in 1937 with the Cambridge 10 with its much more streamlined look, and following the arrival of Leonard Lord development of a proper 8 hp car was accelerated.
First the "new" engine was advertised to be 27HP, but later it was corrected to the same rate as the Big 7, which was 24HP. The new car, which was displayed to dealers in February 1939, kept the 900 cc, four-cylinder, side-valve engine from the Big 7, now with a higher 6.5:1 compression ratio, but had a completely new chassis. This was halfway to full unitary construction in that the main member was a pressed steel floor pan with a box section welded down each side of the car with three others going across the floor. The body was then bolted to this structure. Suspension was by semi-elliptic leaf springs with hydraulic dampers. Two- and four-doo
The hardware
The engine is 900 . On the scales it comes to 775 kg. Drive goes through a 4-speed manual. The wheelbase is 88 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the British Motor Corporation line-up the Austin 8 has a clear place: it replaced the Austin Big 7; it handed the line to the Austin A30; the factory was Longbridge. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Lincoln Continental, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Bentley Mark V. Its British Motor Corporation stablemates include the Austin 10 and the Austin 12.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Austin 8 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.