DAVID WHYLEY, Porter Press International, £85, ISBN 978 1 913089 28 3
MD
Book of the month
‘That’s the best-looking Austin I’ve ever seen!’ So said Donald Healey – perhaps slightly thoughtlessly – to Austin works manager George Harriman at the unveiling of the Austin J40 pedal car in 1947. But he had a point. Designed by a small team working in a corner of the Longbridge factory, the J40 – nicknamed the ‘Joy car’, after the JOY numberplates of its four prototypes (take that, Honda!) – was a brilliant piece of design.
It was also an astonishingly altruistic one. The early post-war years were difficult ones for Britain, but they also saw the foundation of the National Health Service in 1948; less well-known was a decree that war-injured civilians and former soldiers should make up at least 3% of all larger businesses’ workforces. The J40 and its shortlived sister pedal car, the Austin Twin Cam racer-inspired Pathfinder, would end up being made by disabled miners at a new Austin factory in South Wales.
Most amazing is that the idea came fully formed from crusty Austin boss Leonard Lord. Youthful bodyshop man Alf Ash remembered: ‘Lord had thought up the whole package… He wanted a car for kiddies between four and nine that would be just like dad’s car – I recall that vividly.’ It was also Lord who suggested the dummy ‘JOY 1’ registration of the first prototype, because of the joy it would bring to some lucky children.
Heartwarming stuff. But why is a book about pedal cars occupying this ‘Book of the M
