1958 A35 countryman van goes for a drive

everyone loves a tax dodge right I mean I know I do and let's face it if the like and most of the ruling I see you can get away with offshoring their buckets of cash in the Seychelles why shouldn't we get away with a few quid here and there and that has always been the way in post-war Britain especially in the 50s and 60s those are cracking the loophole it meant you could go down to your local car dealer afford Austin Vauxhall and go and buy the commercial version of a car derived fan so I paneled an estate car effectively with no back seats and get over paying less for the car itself and no tax on it or no v80 any rates so you drive off fear a good few pounds and shillings less than you otherwise I spent on it and then because everyone was wise to this and you put down G local motor factors by some glass side panels and some rear seats and off you go you've converted it into a nice estate car looks just as good as if you'd bought it from the dealership in the first place and saved plenty of money brilliant everyone got away with it no one minded and then if you were honest you'd leave it a year or two until you passed the tax point and then just re-register it was a private car everything's fine this car however did it the wrong way around this is an Austin a35 countryman this was an estate car from new someone went to Austin dealership and bought in Austin a35 countryman with seats and windows and paid the tax and everything however at some point for reasons lost to the mists of time someone then chose to take the glass out put metal panels in and removed the rear seats and turn it into a van I don't know why but we do need to remember though next time you watch Wallace and Gromit and they're driving around in their cute little Austin van there's a good chance water synchronic are actually on the make their tax Fiddler's here at the font this is just basically the same Austin a35 you'd find than any other Austin a35 but moving backwards we've got a few little differences which are quite interesting you don't really notice them at first either the fashion was for wooden wooden side panel cars with timber frames and and lots of wooden detail tell you what the MINI Countryman the Morris Minor countryman lots of things of America there Ford Country Squire kind of stuff and they've kind of gone for the countryman on the a 35 this interesting little embossed metal patent I think I've ever noticed this before on one of these but it's very very cute very oldie English and obviously and being just press steel it's a lot cheaper to produce and a much easy to maintain in the future because it doesn't get dry rot or wood one figure that clever shot that's a bit sticky I find it amazing that in 1958 a year after Sputnik had gone into space this thing still had traffic aters on it for crying out loud that's in the same isn't it now this is a metal panel when it left the factory this was glass and you could see into the pretty little interior but no this is a metal panel now because this has become a commercial back at the dealership there are a stack of bits of glass which came from this car from the factory 60 something years ago and so you could convert this back into a car if you want to do there's a back seat in this thing now if you had a business perhaps you wanted to promote it and do something a bit interesting you could sign write this and make it quite an interesting little semi practical delivery van or just a showpiece for your company if you want to do here in the back of this thing it's not a bad load space even with the reinserted seat back up there's about as much space as the alpha one four five boot which I came to work in today so I've got room for a couple of camera bags a tripod no problem the floor is crackle metal finish so that's steel and tough but I guess it might scratch and the sides are paneled in a nice kind of cardboard black stuff like used to seeing cars all the time Austin's sold a 35 or in the catch phrase we can save you money and boy did they save everything they could this car is basic on a whole new level there are even sliding windows because I don't know it just winds it too extravagant this car has been very well restored it's got a few extra buttons on the dashboard has got a fog light and a security cache up here we have a switch for the original traffic Gators but luckily someone has when they restored it a few years ago added modern indicators on the same style of switch so cars fooling you today will actually understand what's going on even though it is astonishingly basic I think all you basically have is wipers lights and a pull switch really that's your your limit I think it's a horn in here as well yeah there's a horn he it's actually very nice to drive it's rapid the speedo reaches 80 miles an hour the claim is this car will make 73 but I wouldn't be that brave myself the quarter-mile drag time is around 28 seconds if you've got enough time on your hands to go and give that a go but actually on the road it's surprisingly smooth because it's the same four-cylinder 948 CC a-series and four-speed manual that went into virtually everything else it was tried and tested and it was a very good simple unit if you want a basic motoring that was reliable and yeah relatively comfortable this is a great little setup to plunk into almost anything you care to name the four-speed is nice it's got synchromesh and it's got reverse in terms of basic merging what more do you need like a radio would be nice Hey in terms of creature comforts you've got electric wipers you've got two Sun visors which not every guide at this point your quarter lights for fresh air on a hot day and I can I'm struggling a little here safety-wise things weren't the best in the 50s there are no seatbelts at all in this car and no locking mechanism on the seats to get you into the back but there is a heater so you pay your money you take your choice seatbelts or heaters you decide and that's a problem one thing I hadn't hand count I was about to say it's really easy to get in and out because the seat is flip straight back and forward I hadn't realized of course that the seats it's not very big I kind of wired for this extremely narrow body back here I'm 510 511 and this driver's seat is set up for me and the seat is now touching my knees I would really need a slightly shorter driver if I was gonna go in this um you've got a lovely view for the windscreen when there's no sitting in the front but it's a little claustrophobic sitting in the back of a van with no windows I suppose you get used to it and be okay on a short journey but I wouldn't fancy it for a long ride on the plus side there's tons of headroom in it and you could be a tall tall person in here with no legs obviously [Music] [Music] much to the annoyance of the Ford c-max and it just blasted up around the corner behind me the Lords of 60 time on this 34 horsepower 835 is 27 seconds so try as I might she's going to be sat behind me for a couple of minutes [Music] I'm gonna turn it off faster relief because in addition to the 34 horsepower it's also 50 foot pound of torque and today's terms those are gonna laughably small amounts of power but in the 50s that was you know obviously a manual choke on this thing but does that synchromesh across the gears so it does make it quite easy to drive there's no other there's no other power assistance going on there's manual steering but the thing is very very light so you don't really need power assistance with that for the brakes though typical Austin a35 as a 35 go they work absolutely perfectly but if you've just jumped out of a brand-new 2018 or 2019 car you might be in for a shock put it this way I'm not gonna get any speeding tickets on this man in this road test but it's normal or fun though it's kind of hard driving this thing because it does feel like a car from a very long time ago don't get me wrong but at the same time it also feels modern enough that you could forget that you're driving something you know 60 70 years old and doesn't have any of the safety features we've got used to for example there's a house driving at me how would I deal with that in a car with no seat belt airbags so yeah after after not many minutes of acclimatizing to the back you're driving a car with no seatbelts and tiny indicators and almost no brakes there's no mistaking it's a car that's the best part of 70 years old at the same time it feels tight enough that you can forget how old the car is and possibly get yourself in a bit of trouble by just burial barreling along way too quickly for a lot of classic BMWs that that's interesting there are a few little idiosyncrasies with this car for example being a van you've got almost no rearward visibility which is a pain so you have to kind of drive past the thing you're gonna reverse to into and then just hope more or less [Music] sliding windows these are hilarious no my word what's going on it feels much faster than it is because I don't lay serious shucks mute heart out it's typical raucous little prayer ready motor giving us all which is not very much but it does it in such a generous way you feel great about it there's a lot of fun to drive or hit 50 miles an hour yeah this is a very little cute endearing color I think that one that's that right well I hope you've enjoyed this little run around this brief look at a weird section of British historical motoring when someone did exactly the opposite for some reason please like and subscribe please save the nasty comments for another Channel please keep comparing my videos to have knock that makes me laugh

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 51,094

Rating: 4.8915095 out of 5

Keywords: Austin, A35, Austin A35, Countryman, A35 Countryman, Austin countryman, 1958, 1958 Austin, 1958 A35, fifties car, 50s car, British car, estate car, longroof, wagon, station wagon, panel van, car, classic car, retro car

Id: HuaQ3OCMQ74

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2019