OLD-SCHOOL LUXURY

Who remembers the Austin three-litre — a sort of Austin 1800 on steroids? John Vevers of Helensville has as many as five of them in his garage.

John bought the first of his collection of Austin three-litre saloons as parts for his MGC. He eventually developed a liking for these well-equipped cars, and decided that they were too good to wreck. With their Hydrolastic suspension, traditional highquality wood trims, and large seats, the cars were well-suited to New Zealand roads.

“I keep on finding them. One was hiding in Marton and two others in Kaitaia. Then there were two manual overdrive cars just south of Christchurch,” John explains.

The Vevers affectionately refer three of the Austin three-litre saloons as ‘Cherry’, ‘Old Blue’, and ‘Blackberry’.

“I had not been using Cherry, due to a perceived power-steering issue, but a run up the road revealed only a soft brake pedal and a misfire that was cured by six new

spark plugs,” John tells us.

Cherry — CTZ396 in the photos — is John’s wife Louisa’s car. It is the most recent three-litre in the couple’s collection, and was bought in 2017. Cherry was one of the last 700 cars off the production line in a run of nearly 10,000 units in England, and has just 75,000 miles (120,000km) recorded. The car required a lot of work from John to get it into its current condition.

Blackberry, F1214, was bought in 2016 with only 35,500km on the clock.

The Austin three-litre saloon was the last luxury car to bear the Austin badge, and the last rear-wheel-drive Austin; 9992 of them were built at Cowley between 1967 and 1971.

One interesting prototype driven for some time by development staff was a Wolseleybadged version, running a 3.5-litre Rover V8. Now that would have been something.

If you know of one of these interesting cars languishing somewhere, or if you own one, you can contact John at mrpalm54@gmail.com.