Austin Champ: A Jeep Ripoff Excellent Sufficient for Led Zeppelin

When it will come to off-street legends, in The usa we lay assert to the Jeep, the Bronco, the Global Harvester Scout and a range of other 4-wheeled brutes. So why is it that we’re nevertheless fascinated by the lore of the Brits and their own heritage overlanders? 

In all probability mainly because they actually know how to generate them into the ground, and then tell a excellent story about it over a pint. There is the 1 about the Oxford and Cambridge pupils driving the Land Rover Series I from London to Singapore. There is that time British distinctive forces painted their Land Rovers pink for greater camouflage in the deserts of Oman. And it’s not all about the precursor to the Defender there is the time Jimmy Webpage and Robert Plant took an Austin Champ up “into the misty mountains” to start off writing Led Zeppelin III.  

Under no circumstances heard of the Austin Champ? It’s an important element of English off-street background, developed at the same time the Rover Business was developing the to start with Land Rover autos. The purpose you in all probability skipped it in your 4×4 instruction is mainly because it was usurped by its brother in arms, as well as the auto it was influenced by: the American jeeps constructed for armed forces use for the duration of Globe War II. 

All through the war, the U.S. supplied 4-wheel-generate jeeps (this is extended just before the Jeep manufacturer emerged) not only to our personal troops but to the Allied Nations. But as Ben Branch recently explained at Silodrome, the Brits soon located “they essential to develop their have version using regionally sourced resources and components.”

This led to the development of the Land Rover Series I as properly as the Austin Motor Company’s Champ, complete name “Truck 1/4- ton, CT, 4X4, Cargo and FFW, Austin Mk.1,” the two of which started out generation right after WWII. Department dug up the beginnings of the latter as a 1952 product recently strike the auction block at Motor vehicle & Classic Auctions. The sale has given that ended, but the auction household is dependent out of the U.K. so American consumers most likely wouldn’t have bothered far better to basically acquire the history lesson.

Sure, the Champ seems to be a good deal like the Jeep you know and (perhaps) enjoy, what with the identical grille, headlight placement and fold-down windshield. But there are a selection of ways Austin differentiated what they hoped would be a additional able device, together with 5 forward gears and five reverse gears, a Rolls-Royce 2838cc 4-cylinder motor, and waterproofing up the wazoo, which meant a folding snorkel that could be affixed to the right side of the hood and let the car or truck to travel in up to 6 ft of drinking water. According to Branch, that function was afterwards axed “as it was considered not worth the excess price tag.”

In actuality, soon after beginning creation in 1951, the Austin Champ, a blatant Jeep ripoff, itself was axed in 1956 in favor of the Austin Gipsy, which was a blatant ripoff of the Land Rover. It’s no marvel, then, that Jeep and Land Rover are still heading solid now, when the Austin Motor Enterprise has not been listened to from in a whilst (although there are rumors the people today who maintain the rights could be cooking up some thing electrical).

But hey, around a 10 years soon after the Champ went out of manufacturing, the blokes from Led Zeppelin had been still scooting all-around in just one when in their primary, which just proves you can implement the rose-colored phrase “they do not make ‘em like they utilised to” to just about any outdated-university 4×4, even the unsuccessful copycats.