Austin’s G.S.5 twins, the Cambridge and Westminster ranges, celebrate their 70th anniversary this year. In this four-part feature, we honour these stylish, but mechanically conventional, machines which looked smart and up to date in 1954 but aged far faster than BMC had envisaged. We also examine how they fit into the wider BMC story as the basis for two families of Farina-styled badge-engineered cars.
Austin A40 Cambridge (GS5) 1954. At its launch in the Longbridge Showroom displayed to show off its monocoque construction and drive train layout.
Development of what became project G.S.5. had begun, in basic terms, before BMC was created, and then crystallised as BMC’s corporate strategy of shared mechanical components in different bodyshells was put into action.
The Morris Minor developed over its 23 years of production, and was produced by Morris Motors, BMC, and ultimately British Leyland.
This plan had started almost as soon as the new corporation had been created when the Morris Minor was fitted with the A-series engine and gearbox from its Longbridge-built rival, the Austin A30, in place of its aged side-valve unit.
The fitment of the Austin A-Series engine into Morris’ top-selling small car, only months after BMC had been created in 1952, was the first hint of corporate rationalisation. The picture shows an A-series engine in a Morris Minor, a limited edition Minor Million, all of which were painted in a very distinctive lilac colour. It’s said that BMC executives decided on Lilac for the Minor Million after a very good lunch…
The Austin A30/A35 has become an unlikely hit in historic motorsport, duelling with Jaguars and other machinery they have no right to be keeping up with!
Austin’s first monocoque, the A30, had been designed by Ken Garrett and Ian Duncan and was a true chassis-less self-supporting structure. They had both left by the time GS5 was started, however, so the new G.S.5 bodyshell was designed by Johnnie Rix and his small team. During testing on rough roads in Spain, it broke up and proved too weak for production and Rix was ‘retired’. Gerald Palmer was then brought up from Cowley by Leanord Lord to oversee the chassis changes. This had to be done quickly as the body tooling had already been commissioned and largely produced so that could not be changed because of the cost. Thus, effective but slightly panicked measures were implemented to strengthen the underside and structure. The result, a monocoque, with the semblance of a chassis welded on underneath, probably offended the purist engineer and enthusiast Palmer. It was a decision that later made the various cars which sprung from the GS5 project very popular in banger racing.
Banger 220, who we can fairly safely assume was called Nigel Parker, smashing his Riley 4/72 into what we think used to be an Oxford or Cambridge Estate. This picture was taken at Foxhall Stadium in Ipswich in the early 1980s and is typical of the entertainment these strong BMC cars provided when they were given one last hurrah on the banger circuit. It’s fair to say that the BMC Farinas, which were all based on Project G.S.5, absolutely dominated the sport of banger racing for many years and now engender the kind of affection among banger fans that the Mk1 Escort does with bobble-hatted rally aficionados.
The immediate upshot of this wasn’t good for BMC, however, because it meant the cars entered the market a little overweight at 2,248lbs unladen, for a 1954 A40 Cambridge; the Mk1 Cortina, launched just 8 years later, weighed in at only 1,750lbs in standard form and when modified by Colin Chapman was a very successful race and rally machine. The Mk1 Cortina proved pretty awful at banger racing though… The decision to add strength and weight to the underside rather than delay the car proved to be a fateful one, though, as the G.S.5-based Farina-bodied Riley 4/72 weighed in at 2,507Lbs was, by 1966, competing with a Mk2 Cortina 1600E, which had superior aerodynamics, developed 18bhp more from the same size of engine, and weighed only 2064Lbs. That’s around 4 average-sized adult passengers lighter than BMC’s offering. It’s clear, therefore, that these BMC cars, especially in 4-cylinder form, were hampered by that initial error throughout their 18 years in production. Today many enthusiast owners see virtue in the feeling of solidity and sheer strength that radiates from all this family of cars, but in the marketplace, when the cars were new, it certainly made them less competitive statistically as the extra weight blunted the acceleration and reduced the fuel consumption.
Various G.S.5 cars on display at Longbridge in 2017 at a Cambridge-Oxford Owners Club event.
The G.S.5 car’s modern styling, which was a real departure from Austin’s earlier post-war roly-poly cars, was done by Italian émigré Dick Burzi in Longbridge’s new glass-roofed styling studio. It was received well and finally deleted the traditional style Austin grille which had been incorporated into the A30, the A40 Somerset and other Austin’s of the immediate post-war era. Burzi was born in Argentina to a French mother and a local father. By the late 1920s he had moved to Italy and was working as a designer for Vincenzo Lancia in Turin, which was quite an honour; Lancia was known for his engineering-first, no-cost compromise perfectionist approach. Burzi would have been there when the Lambda, the world’s first monocoque car, was being developed. He left Italy after, it is rumoured, drawing some ill-advised but amusing cartoons of Il Duce (Mussolini) for a newspaper. Lancia liked him and transferred him to Paris to save him, where he met Austin, probably at a motor show, and ended up working in Longbridge. His real name was Ricardo Burzi but he arrived at Longbridge, speaking no English, in the early 1930s and was instantly called ‘Dicki’; or just ‘Dick’. The ‘cowhip’ rear and generally modern style of both G.S.5 cars were very much his vision.
Austin A40 Cambridge (GS5) 1954. Dick Burzi and artist in the Longbridge Design Office working on design sketches.
Although the 4 and 6-cylinder cars shared doors, the press tools for which are particularly expensive, there were no other shared major panels or components, but they certainly had a very similar overall style, although the Austin Westminster had vestigial blistered wheel arches in the front wings, a detail which presumably Burzi’s team could not get to work aesthetically on a smaller scale. The 6-cylinder car was also something of a surprise to the press when announced at the London Motor Show in 1954 as, although the Cambridge had been previewed and was known about, the Austin Westminster was a well-kept secret.
At launch an A40 Cambridge cost £650 including taxes, an A50 £678, and an A90 £792. For comparison, an Austin Healey 100/4 was £1064 and a 1.5-litre Ford Consul Mk1 was £663. Initially, the press was generally complimentary although they criticised both the drop glass windows (which it was felt would break ladies’ nails) the boot-mounted fuel filler and the stodgy steering when compared to rivals. The window and fuel filler issues were sorted out reasonably easily and quickly meaning early cars with these features are now much prized. The steering remained with the 4-cylinder models throughout their life into the early 1970s and was cured by PAS on some of the 6-cylinder Farina cars. Interestingly both ranges were offered with the option of overdrive, which, inexplicably, was dropped as an option when they were rebodied in 1959; a puzzling decision as with motorways being built throughout Britain at this time overdrive was more desirable in 1959 than it had been in 1954…
Black and white were both common A50 colours.
