IDRIVEACLASSIC reviews: Austin A90 Atlantic

a small message from me before we kick off with today's video idriver classic is proud to be sponsored and insured by adrian flux if you haven't heard of adrian flux before they're the uk's leading specialist motor insurance broker covering everything from classic and vintage cars right through to heavily modified sports cars so whether you're in a morris marina a 90s retro roundabout or something with a bit more oomph under the bonnet give them a call for your next policy i've popped a link to their site in the description box below hi guys it's steph from idriver classic and today i'm back with one of the most iconic cars i saw at a car show last year this incredible austin a90 atlantic from 1949 i saw it at the car show and i was immediately do you ever get that feeling where you're really starstruck about a car well i got it about this car and not just this model of cart this actual car and the owner alistair said to me when well why don't you review it then i said really so i've come out today and i'm going to review it for you i'm going to show you this incredible car now you may know that they came in hard top and convertible and there were only 50 to 60 examples of these convertibles left so we're really really lucky to be testing this car today and it's sunny perfect roof down weather i couldn't ask for a better day so we're going to kick off with a walk around the outside and then i'm going to take you for a test drive on paper the austin a90 atlantic was a commercial failure selling only 8 000 units but looking at it today it's one of the most stylish and standout cars that austin ever made the a90 came out in 1949 and cost an eye-watering 824lbs pounds which to put into perspective for the time the average house price in the uk in 1950 was 1891 pounds making this car an exceptionally well considered purchase for a very small sector of society however despite the car being made at longbridge it was never intended for the home market but instead going out to the american market this wasn't a commercial decision austin perhaps wanted to take because in the years after the war the government controlled the steel supplies and any company failing to export was refused those supplies so really businesses needed to come up with an attractive model to compete out in america and overseas territories with this the a90 atlantic was launched at the 1948 earls court motor show which must have been an absolutely incredible event to go to because it's also the show which saw the launch of the morris miner the car reportedly designed from a sketch by chairman of austin leonard lorde who was definitely influenced by farina bodied alpha 2 500 spotted at a show in geneva in 1946 was initially a convertible car designed with a 2660cc four-cylinder engine with an output of 88 brake horsepower at 4000 rpm in fact the austin a90 was named as such due to the 88 brake horsepower on that overhead valve engine with the atlantic name picked because it was aimed at uniting the uk market with the american buyer the performance was pretty good for the era giving over 90 miles per hour as top speed with zero to 60 in just under 18 seconds this actually made it one of the fastest earliest post-war production cars the car was put into the american market to compete alongside american homebrew models but with its engine much smaller than its american counterpart and the high price tag it just failed to make an impact like it should have and in fact they only ever sold 350 of these cars into the us now it's weird because it should have been the success that austin planned because it hit all the right notes it was simply let down by that four-cylinder engine that whilst good for british and other non-us export markets it just didn't cut it with the american buyer who at the time was very much sold on the notion of nothing compared to a v8 the car instead found its audience elsewhere in the uk mainland europe australia and new zealand but really these markets just didn't hold up the sales figures which pre predicted within the u.s market to make the atlantic the success it needed to be it must be mentioned however when we talk about the us that the car did break 63 stock car records at the indianapolis motor speedway in april 1949 so whilst it may not have been the success that austin planned it really did hold its own when it was put out there now another interesting fact about this car is the indicators because the car was designed for an american market there were the flashing reed layout style that you might see on cars today but in the uk at time of launch this wasn't legal and in fact it wouldn't be legal until 1956 because at the time in the uk it was simply non-flashing trafficators which were put onto cars and which were legal the brakes on this car are hydro-mechanical girling drum brakes with rod operated to rear now these were sharing parts for the a70 and it was done purely to ensure the atlantic went into production on time later on cars like the hard top cars were introduced with fully hydraulic brakes now though we look at cars like this as works of art today and see their true beauty in the 60s and 70s cars like this with their propensity to rot and my goodness didn't these cars rot they were scrapped very rapidly especially with the introduction of the mot test in 1960 and healey owners had their eyes on them as well because they were relatively cheap and therefore it was worth stripping down to service the healeys because you could put all the running gear directly into the cars and with all of these elements combined there are now only around 60 atlantics left in the uk with a further 100 ish around the rest of the world so the car wants dubbed to have sports car performance with saloon car comfort it seems a real shame that the true value of these cars wasn't realised sooner although thankfully the austin counties club club really look out for these cars now and with values going skywards they're really scrapped nowadays which is good news but with only 60 left it's not great is it now for such an old car in such wonderful condition you might have been expecting an older owner in fact i will confess i was actually the owner of this car is only in his 30s well a lot of you always tell me that young people aren't into older cars well alistair is about to prove you wrong so i'm going to introduce you to aleister as one of the most warm friendly and knowledgeable custodians i've met in quite some time so it's over to you alistair to tell us about your austin a90 atlantic hi i'm alistair i own this 1949 austin near 90 atlantic i've owned the car now for six years uh i mainly been into sort of late 40s early 50s cars predominantly austin's i've owned quite a few counties range cars from that period and i finally managed to get hold of this austin atlantic which is sort of the ultimate austin to own i bought the car from the nephew of the original owner um and i've been steadily just restoring parts of the cars like the interior and the exterior but just trying to maintain the originality of the car coming into this car is it's hard to picture isn't it that we're stepping back into britain in 1948 because of course that is when this car debuted at the earl's court motor show designed for an american audience that's why you've got things like the doors opening wider this wrap-around screen looks like some of the american cars that we've been taking out recently and it's got that american styling in a way that british cars just didn't have um but even so it's hard to picture that this car came about in a time when king george was still on the throne that rationing was still in full swing so first of all this is the only thing i don't like about this car so actually i was going to redo it there but i thought it was quite funny that i went on the horn so keep doing it anyway let me show you the thing that i don't like about this car which is these glove boxes they're so impractical look they catch on there and they feel quite brittle and i just i don't think they're a great design they say the one in front of me is the driver is the same and you really have to push it in it's the only thing about the car i don't like so i'll show you everything else now over here we've got our rev counter now these dials might look familiar to you i think they use in o'reilly rm they look very similar anyway so we've got the rev counter we've got the clock and into the center we've got four here so we've got amp meter fuel gauge water temperature gauge oil pressure and over to our right hand side we've got our speedo so we've got a 2660cc engine under the bonnet and i've been reliably informed that people have had these up to 100 miles an hour needless to say on our sedate country drive today we will not be going that fast in the center here we've got a radio now this was an optional extra but this is a really big thing for the time and it's unfortunately not working because i would have liked to see things we've got one speaker down in my foot well how loud it came out but look she's an elderly lady if she's got a few little niggles here and there that's fine and then coming down we've got a selection of poles here so we've got our choke heater fog light so that fog light is that central almost cyclops looking light at the front the push start the panel lights and the wipers there as well now in the middle around the key and we saw this on a recent car and i think it was the rover 12 tourer that had this as well we've got the side and the headlights there now would have liked to have shown you the roof today because this is electric now i believe at the time it cost 40 pounds extra for the roof and 40 pounds extra for the electric windows and by the point of people already subscribing to the purchase they're like well just put on hp and just chuck an extra 80 pounds on people were buying these and just getting those on and when you think about britain and where we were as a country in a nation at that point most people didn't have televisions you know having a radio was a luxury having electric windows in your car was futuristic it was incredible but i won't be able to show you those today because unfortunately the electrics have recently gone and the owner alastair is in the process of getting those fixed because i'm sure you can imagine when you've got a car that's over 70 years old try to find all the bits and pieces that you need is no mean feat but i thought well the sun is shining anyway why would we have the roof up now let me show you the steering wheel because we've got everything as you'd expect here so you've got the horn and we've got the indicators here as well so we've seen these on other cars i can't remember what this is shared with it's something that's on something similar it might be a ford i don't know but i've seen it on something else it's exactly the same setup very similar to that corsair but not quite the same handbrake is the umbrella handbrake and everything just feels like well it's positioned really well i feel like my seating position is really nice i can almost see to the end of the bonnet and uh yeah i'm very excited to take this car for a drive now i'm really looking forward to letting you hear what this car sounds like so remember we've got that 2660cc under the bonnet and it sounds very nice hoping this glove box doesn't come open against keeps rattling [Music] it's just running such a nice note and as you'll hear when we go out for a drive for a car of this era it's remarkable in that there's no knocks bangs rattles which means it's very quiet let you hear from the outside um from the back of the car and then i'm going to take you out for a [Music] drive i've put a bit of extra hairspray on because i've got no roof to protect me today but it's gloriously sunny it's the perfect weather for this test drive and yeah i'm going to take you up through the gears and then we're going to go for a little drive and i'll tell you what she's like so let's go [Music] so [Music] so my god this is a car and a half you would not believe when you got into this that it was made towards the end of the 40s it's incredible so whilst it's quite heavy so you can see the steering well it's quite an understatement really it's very heavy it's so precise to drive so as we come around the corners you'll see that we're not having to rag it round it only needs the most gentle of movements to get a positive response and whilst i found it a little bit tricky to find third gear at first on that box the second attempt is absolutely fine and as you can see our brakes here we talked about those on the walk around i would have liked them to be a little bit more responsive but i think with a bit of forward planning and getting used to them you would be absolutely fine i mean for the time they're very very good just in today's traffic you want a little bit more now even with the roof down which of course would be as noisy as you could possibly ask it to be it's still remarkably quiet and as you can hear we've got a little rattle from up there somewhere but apart from that it's really robust it's robust it's not banging it's not rattly it's completely different to what i was expecting and the nice thing is with that 2660 under the bonnet you've got enough power to keep up with modern traffic the seating position is great you can really judge where you are on the road and for me that gives me ultimate confidence so i've just got into this car never driven it before having driven a column change it absolutely ages and just cracked on and it's so easy to drive i ca i actually can't get over how modern this feels honestly i've gotten stuff that's 10 15 years newer than this and it's felt more antiquated than this is to drive this is this is totally not what i was expecting as you can see here when you're trying to get around quite a stiff corner and you need to be turning it you're needing quite a lot but when you're just driving along these country roads it's absolutely fine it's when you get down to the slower speeds and you're trying to get around these corners that's when you're starting to feel it i think if i had to um if i had to park it that's when i think i would say oh actually it's just a bit it's a bit too much so one of the questions that i asked aleister was what do you do about parts what do you do about advice because it's all very well and good taking one of these cars on a drive and saying i've had a lovely day i'd love one but if the support isn't there is a miserable experience because let me tell you if somebody who drives a car that you can't get bits for one of the greatest blessings in my life is that we have a really good club for both the marina and the metro owners club are very helpful when you need bits and pieces and so i said well what's it like for you with this and alistair said to me he said well we're very lucky because the austin i think it's the austin county's car club are brilliant he said it's not only advice it's parts being remanufactured in fact the sticker that's on this window was remanufactured by the club they remade them and there's just an awful lot of care there and they take their responsibility and their role as custodian really seriously and i don't know i really really like that i thought for me that makes the cars a more attractive prospect because you know if you're in a jam there's a whole club of people that will reach out and help you i tell you what the only thing there actually apart from that heavy steering that is a bit off-putting is this car has the turning circle of a ship it's absolutely enormous going around the roundabout it was really really hard to judge how big by turning circles i thought oh my god what am i doing but look i'm having a great day my hair is ruined but i'm having a great day it has been one of my favorite test drives probably ever on the channel and i can't believe honestly i feel so so lucky to have seen a car at a car show lasted after him for nearly a year and then be given the keys to it to take it out i mean it is a dream come true and i've got i just can't stop smiling it's oh just having such a nice day anyway i hope you've enjoyed watching this video as much as i've clearly enjoyed making it and i really look forward to seeing you next time and until then take care and drive safely you

Channel: idriveaclassic

Views: 25,320

Keywords: Austin Atlantic, Austin atlantic driving, Austin atlantic road test, Austin atlantic review, Austin a90 review, Austin a90, Austin a90 atlantic, Austin a90 road test, Austin a90 atlantic review, idriveaclassic, Austin review, Austin road test, earls court motor show, 1940s car, 1940s car driving, british wartime car, british 40s car, rare car review, rare car road test, 1950s Austin, 40s car, 40s car review, cars you don't see anymore, earls court motor show 1948, revving

Id: hhTkXXs5uyU

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021