History
The Atlantic was one of the first post-war cars engineered from scratch by Austin, and was said to be styled from a thumbnail sketch by Leonard Lord, then Chairman of Austin
With the then Government edict of "Export or die" and steel allocated only to those who generated much needed dollar revenue, the Atlantic was designed specifically to appeal to North American tastes The car featured up-to-the-minute detailing, with a wrap around windscreen, composed of a flat glass centre section with, tiny, curved end panels. The front wings sported twin ’Flying A’ hood ornaments and swept down to a rounded tail, with spats enclosing the rear wheels. A centrally mounted third, fog light was built into the letter-box style air intake grille, and the then unheard of luxury in the form of hydraulically powered windows and hood "flashing indicators" rather than trafficators, (for the United States market at least) and the option of EKCO or HMV Autocrat radios. Few people in Britain would have ever seen anything like the futuristically-styled Atlantic before, and certainly not from a conservative mainstream manufacturer like Austin.
