THE AUSTIN K SERIES PART FOUR

After the war, the planners at the Ministry of Defence decided that they wanted to produce a selection of trucks to cover their future needs, so they looked at designing a new breed of truck under the CT (Combat Trucks) banner and a second set of vehicles based on commercial designs as GS (General Service) trucks. The CT range would be designed, from the bottom up, as military vehicles first, fulfilling the needs of the various services. The second group would be more on-tarmac, commercial vehicles, modified to service a different supply role in the Army, RAF and Navy.

From the drawing boards of the manufacturers, designed from scratch, came the Austin Champ, the Humber FV1600, and the Leyland Martian, while the Austin K9, the Commer Q4 and the AEC Militant were adapted from vehicles already available in some form in the commercial world.

The Austin K9 was ordered in its thousands and kept Longbridge busy for quite a while. It was a very good truck, over-engineered for the one-ton weight range it was designed for, yet very capable of coping with a lot more payload than the builders had anticipated; we are sure that they would