Blast from the past 3 - Austin Gipsy

An interesting one. Ended up very briefly at Goodwood last Saturday with Verdict tester Lee Dalton and the Corsa VXR, where we saw this. Although it looks a bit like an early Land Rover, this is in fact an Austin Gipsy.


The Gipsy was built from the late fifties to the late sixties. What did for it was the coming together of Austin and Rover under the same roof after the formation of British Leyland; the Land Rover was probably always going to come out on top when the post-merger model range was streamlined. The Gipsy was available in short and long wheelbase variants; at 90 inches and 110 inches these were very similar to the two Land Rover wheelbase options. A big difference between the Gipsy and the Land Rover was that the Gipsy had steel bodywork to the Land Rover's aluminium.