• Subject to an extensive restoration and interior retrim in c.2010 • Vintage Austin Register dating authentication, collection of invoices and current V5C document • Fitted with Dynastart and subject to an engine overhaul in 2005 • A splendid example of an Edwardian motor car • Photographs included of the restoration Herbert Austin, General Manager of the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company, set the Birmingham firm on the road to motor manufacture in 1896 when he designed its first automobile, a twin-cylinder tri-car.

The first production Wolseley, though, was four-wheeled and, like Austin’s 1896 prototype, carried its single-cylinder engine horizontally.

Austin’s belief in the horizontal engine’s virtues was not shared by Wolseley’s directors however, and he departed in 1905 to set up his own company at nearby Longbridge.

Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the first Austin cars were powered by conventional inline fours with side valves arranged in “T-head” fashion.

Chain drive wa...