I saw an old Austin Gipsy recently and it reminded me very much of a series 1 Land Rover or Willys Jeep. There is no mystery around that - they were all designed for a purpose. With the Willys Jeep and the Land Rover developed in the 1940s, the Austin Gipsy was a later entrant to the market - and was designed to be a direct competitor to the Land Rover as the Jeep (built by … [Read more...]
Car Names Go Like The Wind
Car names are fascinating. Historically manufacturers either wanted their family name on the vehicles, for example Ford, Ferrari or Lamborghini, or they wanted a fast animal - Jaguar or Panther spring to mind. In some cases manufacturers were named after notable people: De Soto (after an explorer) or Cadillac (after the founder of Detroit). Dropping down a level to a … [Read more...]
Sir Alec Issigonis
Sir Alec Issigonis is best remembered for the Austin Mini - a car that revolutionised the small car package and probably saved the British Motor Corporation at the same time. However, there was more to his life than just one car. He was born in 1906 in a city that is now known as Izmir, in Turkey which itself can trace its history back before Alexander the Great. He was born … [Read more...]
British Motor Corporation
The British car industry has been one of massive consolidation over the years until only a handful of manufacturers were left. It is probably similar to the American industry as both countries technically had a handful of big players. In the US the industry has been dominated by GM, Ford and Chrysler who owned all the main brands, and in Britain it was the British Motor … [Read more...]
EMW (Wartburg)
Everyone has heard of BMW, whether its cars or bikes, but what about EMW? There was a relationship between them and I’ll explain later in the post. The story starts in 1896 when Heinrich Ehrhardt founded the Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach (FFE) to make bicycles and weapons. There must have been similar production processes between these two products as many companies did this – … [Read more...]