Giving Love To A 1950 British Taxi: Into The Modern Age.

Rebuilding, updating, modernising, and bringing a 1950 a40 Austin into the current day.

Context:

I fell in love with this 1950 a40 austin when I was 15 years old. It was owned by a family friend who I ended up working the summer for in my free time in exchange for the car. I spent all my free time that summer trying to bring the car to an original condition but I kept getting the idea in the back of my head that it deserved more. So I decided to instead completely restart, throwing away all my work from before and looking at it from the ground up. This time completely replacing all the suspension, brakes, motor, etc. When finished the car will be like a modern car with a outdated body.

Key Skills:

Shop Experience
Getting Dirty
Welding
Sheet metal
CAD Design
Suspension Design
Large Scale Wiring
Finding A Way To Do It

Design:

The design has a few key points the rest will be improvised as I build while keeping the end goal in sight and feature creep out of the picture.

Key design checklist:

progess is indicated to right.

Find workspace capable of doing shop work:
Remove engine and body:
Research Suspension design:
Design IFS for the Austin:
Build, manufacture, assemble new Front clip:
Cut the original frame:
Splice in new front clip:
Assemble suspension:
Stage One complete:
Next is motor installation:

Build process:

The project is still currently in progress in my shop. Below I included a few pictures of the process thus far.

I would love to discuss this project further. If there are any suggestions on what type of motor I should consider the size of the car please send me an email!

I will update this page shortly with the entire build process, but I am a little busy to finish it right now.

The Big Picture:

A few pictures of the progress thus far, here to satisfy your curiosity while this page awaits updates.