Vintage Thing No.171 - Austin 10 Ripley

The Austin 10 Ripley. That radiator reminds me of an Austin 7 Grasshopper but chromed or nickel plated

This rare survivor of an Austin Ten Ripley Sports appears at shows around the west country following a comprehensive restoration. I had a close look at it at Boconnoc last summer and it especially intrigued me because, years ago, I read about how the great rivals in the UK motoring market place – Austin and Morris – faced each other off with cheap sporty cars.

In simplest terms, Austin had the Austin 7 and Morris had Morris Garages.

The MG brand included larger sports cars and even saloons but Austin remained happy to let the Austin 7 represent them in the “scurrying kindergarten” the Bentley Boys had to contend with.

However, there were little glimmers of sportiness in other parts of the Austin range as represented by the Austin 10 Ripley Sports.

The present owner of this particular restored it over a seven-year period after it was recovered from a scrapyard in Callington in the 1960s. It now looks better than new.

Austin endowed the Austin 10 engine with an alloy cylinder head, revised valve timing from a new camshaft design and a downdraught carburettor. All that provided 30bhp, an extra 9bhp (a 42% increase on the original 21bhp!) and enough to raise the top speed to 65mph from around 50mph. The 1125cc four-cylinder side-valve engine came with a close ratio gearbox and the light(er) weight aluminium body also helped performance as well as looks. Bore and stroked were 2½” by 3½” (or 63.5 x 88.9mm in new money).

Derbyshire police operated at least one Ripley Sports with a red and white checked radiator grille. Once they came on the secondhand market, locals could always spot an ex-police car by its red and white checked radiator.

My interpretation of a police interceptor Austin 10/4 Ripley Sports. I may have fattened up the wheels and tyres.

From 1932 to 1939, Austin produced over 170,000 Austin 10s. Only 128 Ripleys were produced in the two years from 1933.

Sports saloon versions were also available, with bodies by Gordon and Flewitt, but that erudite motoring historian Michael Sedgwick described them as not very sporting.  

Never common when new, Ripley Sports numbers were reduced further over time as their attractive bodies were removed for more sporting chassis. However, among enthusiastic Austin 10 owners they became the most desirable variant of these popular little cars.

See what I mean about the radiator? This is an Austin 7 Grasshopper replica I photographed at a show somewhere many years ago

It even has contemporary direction indicators of a type eventually banned by the police because of the confusion they caused. The Wilcot Robot flashing direction indicator resembled traffic lights on each side of the car each with three coloured lenses. A double amber meant a signal was about to be made. Two greens indicated straight on, a right turn was a red on the right and a green on the left and a green on the right and a red on the left indicated a left turn. A built-in timer switched the lamps off.

I suppose the amber – I mean golden – rule would be to not undertake or overtake when showing any red light. However, the Ministry of Transport came to disapprove of the Wilcot Robot indicator. On the road, they proved confusing.

I suspect this is an Austin 10/4 Sports Saloon. I even tried looking up the registration number on the DVLA database for confirmation but it was a case of "Vehicle not found." Unhappy face.

William Morris had been sufficiently impressed to offer the Wilcot Robot flashing direction indicator system on his cars from 1933 but Sir Herbert Austin wrote he did not think “a complicated signalling device such as that recently introduced by a certain make of car is a step in the right direction”. Morris (later Lord Nuffield) subsequently announced that semaphore indicators would be used in future and offered to convert any cars originally fitted with the Wilcot Robot indicator. Legend has it Morris Motors dug a pit behind a factory building and filled it with discarded trafficators.

I reckon I took these photos at Wadebridge Royal Cornwall showground in the mid 1980s.

The Ripley had a big brother. This was the Newbury, with the same type of body on a slightly longer wheelbase on account of the six-cylinder engine ahead of the front bulkhead. Austin offered two versions of the Newbury – a 1496cc six (61.25 x 84.582mm) from the 12/6 and another with the 14/6 engine of 1711cc (65.5 x 84.63mm). The longer bonnet for the six pot motor had four side vents in the bonnet compared to three on a 10/4 Ripley Sports. These were out of the same copy book as the Ripley and were credited with 43bhp from the engine tweaks and a maximum speed of 75mph. However, Michael Sedgwick stated that this was hard work and no match for contemporary Morrises or Vauxhalls. Out of 30,000 Light 12/6s, only a couple of hundred Newburys were ever made. More common were Light 12/6s with saloon bodywork, some of them pressed steel affairs using Ambi-Budd tooling on their lower chassis frames.

Many little sixes flowered in the 1930s because of the RAC based car taxation system. This took into account the bore of the engine. The bigger the bore the more tax was incurred but that didn't matter so much if the engine had more cylinders than the usual four. This so-called horsepower tax held back British engine design for many years since bigger bores and shorter strokes encouraged higher engine speeds and greater efficiency. 

Those bore and stroke sizes for the Austin little sixes don't make sense to me. A six cylinder version of the 10/4 engine would give 1689cc. A 14/6 bore with a 10/4 stroke (65.5 x 88.9mm) would give 1797cc (or an 1198cc four) with the same sort of bore/stroke ratio. Biggest bore and shortest stroke to optimise piston speed would be 65.5 x 84.582mm to give a six of 1710cc and an 1140cc four. Why have all that different tooling?

My interpretation of a Newbury with the bodywork of that mysterious Ripley I spotted long ago

Another mystery is the reason Austin chose Newbury and Ripley as names for these cars. When I lived in Andover, Newbury was a terrible bottle-neck until they built the bypass. I’d never even heard of Ripley. It’s a town in Derbyshire.

Model names throughout the thirties and even into the fifties were friendly and evocative of family days out. Morris had Cowleys and Oxfords and but Austin had Cambridges, Lichfields and Sherbornes.  It wasn’t just highways beckoning to the Austineer of the thirties. Who could resist driving their Cambridge to – oh I dunno – Oxford? In the thirties, extensive Austin body styles tipped their motoring hats to Kempton, Eton, Ascot, Westminster, Carlton, York and Norfolk. Post war, Austin embraced whole counties such as Devon, Somerset and Dorset. Decades later, these cuddly old cars make me think of cream teas and country house murder mysteries.

The best Austin name of all was the Ulster, bestowed on some of the most sporting of Austin 7s, following their successes in the Tourist Trophy races at Ards.

Ripley sports saloon had Ambi-Budd steel coachwork and in an anticipation of their increased performance I've fattened up the wheels and tyres a little

Having been intrigued by the Austin 10/4 Ripley Sports even before I’d seen one, I began to wonder, upon meeting one, what sporty Austins there might have been in a parallel universe. Unlike Morris and MG, Austin had no ohc or even ohv engine options so I reckon they would have strapped superchargers to their little flatheads. The sixes were fragile compared to the fours but the Austin 7 Grasshopper trials car had very attractive lines and something similar on the Austin 10 chassis mit kompressor might have been fun.

Be that as it may – with the introduction of the corporate Austin painted radiator grille from 1935 onwards, no more “sporty” Tens, Twelves or Fourteens were offered.

Austin 10s and 12s epitomised dependability, economy and reliability. The Ripley Sports version – being wide of the sporting mark – did not compromise that friendly, wholesome and slightly woolly reputation. It created showroom interest. Customers might think fleetingly about buying a Ripley before becoming all sensible and settling for an ordinary but reliable saloon.