This is the first episode in a brand new YouTube series from the team at Car & Classic.
It’s a refreshingly honest look at what it’s actually like to find and rescue cars from barns, sheds, and garages – without the glitz and glamour of a full production crew and a team of people behind the scenes making sure things go off without a hitch.
Episode 1 centres around an old but serviceable Austin A30 that’s been donated to the team after sitting in a tiny lock-up garage for the past 12+ years. Watching Car & Classic editor Chris Pollitt and Richard Brunning of Bad Obsession Motorsport working to get it running is deeply relatable, particularly if you’re anything like me and enjoy tinkering on old European iron.
The Austin A30 is an exceedingly important car in Britain, it was spiritual successor for the Austin 7 which was more or less the British equivalent to the Model T Ford.
The A30 was the first car of multiple Formula 1 World Champion Jackie Stewart, Graham Stewart (also a multiple Formula 1 World Champion) drove an A30 in competition in period, and fellow Formula 1 World Champion James Hunt was known for his deep and abiding love of his Austin A35 van – the very closely related (and similar looking) successor to the A30.
The A30 was has a unibody structure, unusual for the era, it was designed to fit neatly in the small garages of the time and down the small alleys and laneways of England. Many Baby Boomers grew up being driven around in the backseat of an Austin A30 of some description, and it remains a beloved classic car in Britain.
I won’t mention here whether they succeed in getting the car running, but I will encourage you to watch to the end and click that YouTube subscribe button.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
