Project Petrolhead

Following on from my disastrous interview with the Right Honourable P.I. Staker, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Mazda MX-5, a car that I don’t much like, and I’ve come to a realisation. There is another car out there that does all the things the Mazda does, while exhibiting a certain flair that even a Japanese roadster cannot match.

It has a reasonably sized 4-cylinder engine driving the rear wheels through a manual gearbox, skinny tyres that allow you to have silly fun at non-threatening speeds, a long-standing race pedigree, thriving aftermarket scene and, to top it all off, a microscopic kerb weight of just 680kg. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… the Austin A35.

Introduced in 1956 as a successor to the massively successful Austin A30, the A35 (yes, Austin got there 6 decades before Mercedes) was designed to be a car for the people, blending practicality with style and a larger, more powerful engine than its predecessor. The 948cc A-Series engine pushed out a dizzying 34bhp that would propel this veritable rocket sled from 0-60mph in 29 seconds, and onto a terrifying top speed of 72mph, so it would be entirely possible to break the UK’s yet-to-be-introduced 70mph national speed limit… going downhill… with a tailwind. No wonder it was the preferred mode of transport for F1 legend James Hunt.

The reason I’ve become so hung up on the A35 is because we used to have one in the family. My Dad bought a rolling 1957 A35 shell in 2008 (Coincidentally, it arrived the same day as my Mum’s birthday which, as you can imagine, went down like a lead balloon) and spent the next few years restoring it to near-showroom condition. He repaired and fully re-sprayed the body, rebuilt the engine (adding an SU Carburettor for a small boost in torque) and re-trimmed the interior to a beautiful standard. He even used it as an opportunity to try and pass some mechanical skills onto me, teaching me things like how to weld, how to fit a piston, how to swap an engine block and how to fit and bleed brakes. I’ll always remember how proud I was of that car and that man as we trundled down the lanes, knowing that he had resurrected this beautiful little saloon, with it’s black paint, white steel wheels and red vinyl interior, with his own bare hands.

Once completed to Dad’s exacting standards, we would spend many a summer Sunday attending local classic car shows, meeting other like-minded enthusiasts and marvelling at other pristine vehicles. Dad would reminisce about the Vauxhall Senator or his Dad’s Mk II Escort and I would become giddy with excitement about the arrival of a Jaguar E-Type or some pre-70s American muscle. Some of the best weekends of my childhood were spent stood in a field, eating a cheap bacon roll, surrounded by classic family saloons and the rich, heady smell of unburnt fuel.

Dad sold the car (affectionately known as “Half Pint” due to its numberplate – PNT 84) in 2019 due to a combination of a back injury that stopped him crawling around on the garage floor, needing the extra garage space and, worst of all, taking up the pursuit of caravanning. I never got a chance to drive the A35 before it’s departure (aside from manoeuvring it around the driveway), and I’ve often wondered what it would have been like. I may get to drive one at some point in the future, I may even own one (second-hand prices have remained temptingly attainable, and you can easily swap in a 1275cc block for extra grunt), but it’ll never mean as much to me as that rusty old shell, rolled out onto the driveway all those years ago.

And I’d still rather have one of those than an MX-5.