‘Flexitor’ Rubber Springs And ‘Cruciform’ Frames: The Austin Champ And Gipsy 4x4s Were Deeply Strange

What surprises many people is that every single famous, high-volume off-road vehicle — the Land Rover Defender, the Toyota FJ, the Ford Bronco, the International Scout, etc. — was inspired by the World War II Jeep. I myself had a hard time believing that since off-road attributes seem so obvious you’d think everyone would converge to the same thing naturally and without influence, but nope. The World War II Jeep was the bright light in the sky that opened the eyes of all the rest, and that includes Austin.

It all started with the Austin Champ, which car culture website Silodrome writes about in its article “A Brief History of the Austin Champ – Everything You Need To Know“:

Once the war was over however and the Nazis had been suitably dealt with, the British Army decided that they wanted a vehicle like the Jeep but better: a purpose built combat vehicle that could do rather more than a Jeep. And so in that aura of “the British are best at everything” sort of thinking they began the process of creating their very own “Rolls-Royce of Jeeps” complete with an actual Rolls-Royce engine.

[…]

The first thirty prototypes of the new vehicle were made by British car maker Wolseley and named the  “Wolseley Mudlark”, presumably because they were intended to be a vehicle well suited to larking about in the mud.

These Mudlarks were fitted with the Rolls-Royce B40 No. 1 Mk 2A petrol/gasoline engine. There is some debate as to whether there were only thirty Mudlarks made, one was listed as being a “saloon” which would mean an enclosed car and it may have been additional to the thirty.

The article goes on:

The Fighting Vehicles Research and Development Establishment left no stone unturned in their quest for the “Holy Grail” of a new combat vehicle that front line soldiers could trust their lives to. There were to be just three trucks given the “CT” Combat designation. The smallest of these was to be the “Truck, 1/4 Ton, 4×4, CT” which would be more commonly referred to as the “Austin Champ”.

It’s an absolutely fantastic little machine — diminutive in size, and outfitted with an 80 HP 2.8-liter Rolls Royce engine or 75 HP 2.66-liter Austin inline-four engine. The motors sent power through a five-speed manual transmission to wheels suspended from a fully independent suspension mounted to a solid steel frame. But it wasn’t a ladder-frame, it was a “cruciform” frame, which should provide additional torsional stiffness, while in theory allowing for some interior packaging advantages as well:

You can see in the image above the four longitudinal torsion-bars that each attach to a lower control arm to act as a spring. That’s the rear of the car up close and the front in the background; you’ll notice that rear diff looks a bit large. Here’s why (again, from Silodrome):

The need to place the transfer box at the rear and make it in unit with the differential came from the cruciform shape of the chassis which precluded attaching the transfer case to the gearbox in the more common way. This led to the Austin Champ gaining a rather unusual feature: the reversing gear was located in the transfer box meaning that the Champ had five forward gears, and five reverse gears. So, the Champ could do over 50 mph forwards or backwards, which could be rather handy if one needed to beat a hasty retreat.

That’s nuts!

Check out this awesome video showing the British military putting the Champ through its paces:

Anyway, this article isn’t even about the Champ, it’s about its successor, the Gipsy, whose name is an unacceptable slur and whose history Austingipsy.net explains here:

The Austin Gipsy was first conceptualized in 1956, they wanted to build a civilian replacement for the military Austin Champ that could compete with other manufacturers like Land Rover and Jeep. The Gipsy was first announced in February 1958 and was intended as a rugged cross-country machine. It had a rounded box-section chassis and four wheel independent suspension.

The G1M10 (Series 1) was built at Longbridge East works and had a wheel base of 90” it rode on torsional rubber springs called Flexitors on which were mounted trailing arms, the Flexitor units gave a soft ride and had a self damping effect, combined with hydraulic dampers the Gipsy had the ability to travel more smoothly over rough terrain than leaf sprung vehicles. It had a load capacity of 10 cwt.

The differentials had a 5:12-1 ratio and were mounted up on the chassis, there were plans to mount the brakes inboard on the sides of the differentials as well but this couldn’t be done due to legal requirements.

What the? Seriously? Rubber springs?

Indeed, as pointed out in the video above by YouTube channel Austin Gipsy Site, the Austin Gipsy had hollow-cylinder-shaped rubber springs that, as I understand it, were vulcanized to a metal tube on the outside and then vulcanized to some kind of shaft on the inside — a shaft that was connected to trailing arms on which the wheel hubs bolted.

Out back, you’ve got a similar metal tube with rubber Flexitor springs, but it’s been split in two to accommodate the driveshaft:

Here’s a closer look at those trailing arms. They’re rigidly mounted to the shaft that goes inside the “Flexitor” spring. You can see that each halfshaft fits through a hole in each trailing arm to drive each wheel:

Here you can see the bearing carrier bolted to the rear trailing arm:

Here’s a wide-out of the rear suspension:

Up front, you’ll see that not only does the halfshaft go through the trailing arm, but so does the steering tie rod!:

You may notice that there are no conventional tube-shaped shocks; do the rubber springs act as the dampers?

The answer is: Yes. The rubber springs do provide some damping, but actually there is an additional damper. Check it out:

There’s a link on the trailing arms that rotates a shaft in what appears to be a cast aluminum damper that contains little pistons. Here’s another look (this is the front right shock, the above is the front left):

And here’s a wide shot from the rear (again, the front right).

That weird suspension mounts to an oval-shaped frame made up of two welded U-shapes (one on top, one on bottom):

The differentials are mounted to the frame via these interesting brackets that drop down from the frame:

Here’s a Gipsy brochure showing some more hardware. Here’s the four-speed transmission:

Here’s the frame and the two available engines, which include either a 2.2-liter gas engine or a 2.2-liter diesel. Austin Memories describes the engines in its article, writing:

[The Gipsy] was powered by the 2,199 cc four-cylinder petrol engine that was in the Austin A70 Hereford. It had proved to be reliable and although only producing 62 bhp @ 4,000 rpm power is not everything, torque is more important for this type of vehicle at 110 lbs/ft at just 1,500 rpm. Also available was a diesel engine of 2,178 cc which had its engine speed governed at 3,100 rpm and produced 55 bhp.

Here you can see different body variations:

And here are some Austin Gipsys working on the farm:

I could go on and on about the Austin Gipsy, but I shouldn’t because this post’s original title was simply: “The Old Me Would Have Bought These Two Austin Gipsys,” in reference to these vehicles I found on Facebook Marketplace:

$4400 for two?! Seems like a smokin’ deal.

Here’s the seller’s description:

I have 2 Autumn Gipsy’s that I was going to use to make 1 nice one. They are both projects, one has a pretty good body and ran when I put them away, the other has a hard top, and a lot of good parts and pieces the the other one needs. Both are independent suspension. This is just a project that I’m not going to get to. If the ad is up, they are still available. Let’s not waste each other’s time.

I’d be concerned about parts availability, but otherwise, could you imagine crawling around Moab in an Austin Gipsy? I think the old me actually might have done it.

Screenshots: Austin Gipsy Site (YouTube). Images: Austin or Facebook Marketplace (Mike Patterson) unless otherwise stated.