A cover recreated and ‘Pru’, Kim’s A30, joins in this time
The cover photograph for the July 1992 issue of Practical Classics highlighted a buying guide within, that I had suggested to the magazine, covering the Austin A40 Devon, Dorset and Somerset models, plus the A70 Hampshires and Herefords. At that time I had been freelancing for the magazine for four years, producing a variety of ‘buying’ and other articles for the title. With the great help of the Austin Counties Car Club, a photograph session was arranged in Hampshire and the article, entitled ‘The County Set’, duly appeared. I have just re-read it and thankfully it still seems appropriate in most respects (apart from prices!). Fast forward 30 years, and I was contacted by Peter Ridgway, who suggested that it would be a terrific to bring together the cars used in that original feature.
Remarkably, Peter still owns the same A40 Somerset that he had brought along to the original shoot, and the other three Austins that appeared in that cover shot are still on the road. The A70 Hampshire, owned by Roger Best in 1992, is still in his hands too. The A40 Devon has changed hands twice and is now with Eddie Parsley. The A70 Hereford, owned at the time of our photo session in 1992 by Derek Goddard, has been in the hands of Colin Shales ever since acquiring it from Derek a few months later.
Counties assemble!
From various directions around the country we assembled at Blackbushe Aerodrome in Hampshire in order to record the cars being brought together once more. I took along my old faithful four-door Austin A30 saloon, ‘Pru’, as I had driven this car to the original photo shoot, also I wanted to photograph the car along with its larger Austin A40 and A70 ‘family members’. All these ‘Austin of England’ models sharing similar design cues fine-tuned by Ricardo (‘Dick’) Burzi. Incidentally, although the styling of the A30 had close similarities with that of the A40 Somerset and the A70 Hereford, both of which had arrived before it, these two larger models still featured a separate chassis, whereas the A30 was the first Austin to be built with fully unitary ‘chassis-less’ construction.
