It would be Ostin where I come from

To rhyme with "bostin",….

Orrsten-tatious.

pgk

As a child and young man I lived in Smethwick, our next door neighbour (a WW 1 veteran) worked at the Austin Motor Works at Longbridge for many years, and he always pronounced it "Ostin" He worked there at a time when Herbert Austin used to walk around his factory to see how things were going, and thus he knew him. Come to think of it, many of our neighbours worked there (the money on the production line was VERY good at the time), and they always pronounced it "Ostin". I worked there for a few years in the 1960's and we always called it "Ostin", though at that time we tended to use the name "BMC" more than "Austin." In time, it became "British Leyland Motor Corporation" and then simply "British Leyland", but the less said about that the better.

I come from the south of England and never heard of the car being called Awstin except by the ok yars, who have always pronounced things differently.

Mummy and Daddy always taught me to say Awstin, but when they sent me to a posh school I found there they all said Ostin. But since their Daddies drove Rovers and Wolselys, and even mine had a Humber, perhaps they were trying to reflect the social stratum they thought the brand belonged to…

That'd be 'Straya to you. But the cars were always known here as Ostins. I think some were assembled here, making them 'Strayan Ostins,

We had an Ostin A40 when I was a kid. With a cruising speed of about 45mph, 'Straya was a bigger country in those days than it is today, with Mum, Dad, three boys and the dog all loaded up for annual holidays several hundreds of miles away. Air conditioning consisted of winding the window down. And it had those little turn signals that flipped up out the side like jug ears and flashed. That were hi-tech in 1965 that were.

On board entertainment consisted of punching each other in the arm until the first one cried. The old man would threaten to pull up under the nearest shady tree and give us all a flogging with "the Army belt".  But of course the nearest  tree was half an hour's drive away and he'd forgotten by then, distracted by the dog breaking massive wind and No.2 brother breaking the window winder handle off.

Edited By Hopper on 01/10/2020 08:06:05

I worked for ostin Morris and then ostin Rover also British Leyland, Pressed Steel, Rover, MINI then BMW MINI, my place of work never changed but a name change was a regular occurrence.

Mike

Horace Batchelor on Radio Luxembourg. If he was that good at football pools,why wasn't he winning a big prize every week?

It's Ostin, Mater and Pater taught you wrong loike.

The posh can't saw R so it was Wovers