From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
HERBERT 'PA' AUSTIN: Born in 1866 to Giles Austin, a Buckinghamshire farmer, Herbert Austin saw very little future for a farmer's son in those depressed times and after schooling took up several apprenticeships, none of which he was to complete. At the age of 16, he emigrated to an uncle in Australia.
The young Austin had a talent for improving mechanical things and in 1899 returned to England to join the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company in Birmingham as an engineer. Within two years he was a manager and somewhat furtively built his first motor car there in 1898. This resembled the French Leon Bollee tri-car and led to the establishment of the Wolseley Tool and Motor Car Company.
In the new company Herbert was soon joined by his brother Harry who was to remain loyal to him throughout his working life.
The Wolseleys designed by Herbert Austin each featured a horizontal engine. Herbert believed in racing his designs as a means of publicity and entered a three car team in the ill-fated 1903 Paris to Madrid race, as well as two cars in the 1905 Gordon Bennett race in Auvergne. In the same year, Austin left Wolseley, raising capital of £37,000 to buy a derelict factory at Longbridge outside Birmingham. There, Herbert moved into a small office which was to remain his base for the rest of his life. A man of simple tastes, he was never happier than when exploring the surrounding countryside on his bicycle.
The early days of the Austin Motor Company at Longbridge were often difficult and disaster was never far away. On one occasion, a promised cheque to cover that weeks wages failed to arrive. Herbert took to his bicycle and vanished for the day. Such was the regard he was held in by the workforce that they did not question his brother Harry when he announced that Herbert had forgotten to sign the wages cheque before leaving. The following day the promised cheque arrived, the men were paid their wages and Herbert got down to work again!
By 1908 Austin was making 17 different models - all straightforward, reliable cars. When war came in 1914, the Austin Motor Company turned its skills to the war effort, for which Herbert would gain a knighthood in 1917. However, Herbert's only son, Vernon, was to perish in the Great War on the battlefield of the Somme.
Like many others, the Austin Motor Company found the post-war years very difficult and by 1921 was facing bankruptcy. A receiver was appointed and it looked like the end was not far away.
Herbert's response was to shut his assistant, Stanley Edge, up in the billiards room of his house at Lickey Grange, where the two worked day and night for eight months on the design of what was to become the Baby Austin. Launched at the 1922 London Motor Show, Herbert's fellow directors were highly sceptical of the possibilities for this seemingly skimpy car but the public thought otherwise and at £225 it could be afforded by people who had previously never had the wherewithal to afford a motor car.
By 1925, Austin was manufacturing 25,000 Baby Austins anually, and bringing the price down yearly. On the basis of this success the receiver was soon gone and the Austin Motor Company went from success to success.
In his success, Herbert Austin became a benefactor to many hospitals and notably, to Lord Rutherford's 'Atom Laboratory' at Cambridge. When war came once more in 1939, the company turned its attention to aircraft manufacture as well as weapons. In November 1940, Herbert attended a funeral and caught a chill, which turned to pneumonia, followed by a fatal heart attack in May 1941.
Although 'Pa' had a reputation as a difficult, single-minded man, 20,000 of his workforce, as well as the very many institutions he had befriended, mourned his death. Today, he is remembered as the designer who more than any other brought motoring to the British public.