Major Reconstruction of Austin A90 Atlantic in Invercargill

A friend of mine, here in Invercargill, is currently doing a ground-up rebuild of an Austin A90 Atlantic Convertible. The car was owned by a local doctor for many years throughout the 1950s/60s and I remember seeing it on the road around Invercargill when I was a young boy.

The car was in very poor condition regarding its inner construction when presented for restoration, although a more reasonable Atlantic sedan came with it as a spares car.

Fellow club member Kev Airton has been a huge help in moving this project forward, in supplying information and many photographs of his own Atlantic Convertible, especially regarding the mechanical operation of the convertible hood, as many pieces for this were missing, but can now be re-made. The correct placement of the fuel tank and filler apparatus was another “head-scratcher” that Kev was able to solve for us, thanks to more photos of his own car. Many other photos were gleaned off the internet to help out in other areas of the car.

This Invercargill Atlantic is now almost at the stage of sealing, putting back on the chassis and panel finishing.

We are currently trying to source a full set of same-profile, usable wheels for the car, as the ones that came with the two cars are of various styles, with many having had bad repairs done to their centres, where they cracked due to a manufacturing fault of not enough strength around the stud-centres. A70 Hampshire and Hereford wheels will fit, but these cars are also extremely thin on the ground here now. We are about to try Devon/Somerset wheels, as these are very similar spec-wise, but have a slightly smaller hub-cap and perhaps clearing the Atlantic brake drums might be an issue?

So, not an easy car to do nowadays in this country, but with dogged determination and knowledge gained along the way, from people such as Kev and the greatest invention ever made for car restorers, i.e. the Internet, you can usually reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Over 800 Atlantics of all models were originally sent out to Australia and New Zealand, although very few made it here in comparison to the numbers went Australia.

A huge amount of new metal went into the floor and box sections

Boot, fuel tank area

Bulkhead, A-pillar construction