Austin Gipsy

The Austin Gipsy was designed in the late 1950’s as a rival to Land Rovers and Willy’s Jeeps. Sadly, the Austin Gipsy struggled to compete with its main rivals.  When Austin and Rover became part of the same group in 1968, production of the Gipsy ceased, with approximately 21,000 units completed (information sourced from https://austingipsy.net/)

1964 Austin Gipsy MkIV

This particular example is a short wheel base, 2.2 litre diesel engine Mark 4.  The 1964 classic has been saved from a barn in Norfolk.  It was discovered with substantial rusting to the body, but with a chassis still in good condition.  Incidentally, all of the chassis’ built for Austin Gipsy’s were made in Wolverhampton – not far from our current industrial premises! This is the owners’ first restoration project, but they have great plans for the Gipsy, and hope to have it restored and roadworthy as soon as possible.

Austin Gipsy’s chassis, tub and panels are built using steel, however the panels are particularly thin in some areas.  As a result of this, they’re often suffering from rot and rust so need to be cleaned gently if at all possible.  On this occasion, we used bicarbonate of soda to clean almost the whole vehicle, to ensure no further damage occurred.  The chassis didn’t need to be included, but we would have had no choice but to clean this with crushed glass – soda simply isn’t effective enough on this area.

The Gipsy as it arrived at our premises:

 

Partially blast cleaned Austin Gipsy:

As is almost always the case, some areas of filler were found on the vehicle.  This was recorded and then removed, so that the customer could restart the restoration from the very bare metal.

The completed Austin Gipsy:

Here’s how the tub and removable panels looked once they’d been blast cleaned.  There’s a fair amount of work required to complete this restoration, but the owner wasn’t put off!

 

If you’re thinking about restoring your Austin Gipsy, get in touch today to see how we can help get your work off to the best start – or take a look at our shell cleaning information HERE.