Selling truly small cars in the United States has always been a challenge, just as it was for American Austin.

With a wheelbase of only 75 inches, 10 inches shorter than a Nash Metropolitan, and a track width of 40 inches, 16 inches narrower than standard gauge, the American Austin is our provisional candidate for smallest production car marketed in the USA (King Midget et. al. notwithstanding). At least since the industry’s pioneer days, anyway—the curved-dash Oldsmobile’s wheelbase was 66 inches.

As the name implies, the American Austin was an Americanized version of Sir Herbert Austin’s Austin 7 introduced in 1927, backed by American investors and manufactured in a former rail car plant in Butler, Pennsylvania, 35 miles north of Pittsburgh. Also known in its home country as the Baby Austin, the machine was small even by British standards, and to American car owners it was downright tiny. U.S. Production began in 1930, and for the first year or two, sales ran at a sustainable rate.

The American Austin’s chassis closedly followed the Austin 7 template, with an A-shaped ladder frame and hybrid torque-tube driveline. Suspension was by parallel quarter-elliptic leaf springs at the rear and a transverse leaf spring and friction dampers at the front. Naturally, the steering gear and pedal controls were relocated from the right to the left, and the 45.6 CID four-cylinder engine was a mirrored version of the Austin 7 as well, with two main bearings and 13 horsepower.

The American version’s greatest departure from the British original was in its exterior sheet metal. Manufactured by Hayes Body Corporation of Michigan and designed by the body maker’s resident stylist, Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky, the styles included a two-seat roadster, a two-place sedan that was really more of a coupe, and various open and closed commercial bodies. The optional radiator mascot was a bantam rooster.

As noted earlier, deliveries were fairly brisk the first year at more than 8,000 units, but as the thin demand was rapidly exhausted, sales plummeted. And despite what we might assume, the arrival of the Great Depression didn’t really help, either. When we examine the Austin’s price, we can see the problem. At around $425, the cost was only a sawbuck or two cheaper than a new, full-sized Ford Model A—then consider all the almost-new, used cars available. And there is the perennial problem with selling small, low-priced cars in the USA: the bottom rungs of the market are dominated by clean, well-equipped used cars.

The American Austin’s greatest attraction was probably its novelty: They were good at drawing attention. With their small size and cute looks, they were often used in commercial promotions, as with the Anheuser-Busch ice cream wagon, above. (By 1933, Repeal couldn’t come soon enough.) Hollywood actor and director Buster Keaton was a big fan of the little cars, too. That’s the comedy genius himself behind the wheel in the roadster and sedan models pictured here.

Production was suspended in 1932, then restarted in 1934 with bodies produced in-house, only to be halted again in 1935 due to poor sales and the dismal economic climate. At that point entrepreneur Roy S. Evans stepped in and bought out the factory and contents, and with no remaining ties to Austin, the car and the company were renamed American Bantam. For 1937, the bodies were given a smart update with wheel spats and a streamlined grille, below, but sales never did turn around and production ended in 1941. The American Bantam Company did play a key role in the development of the World War II Jeep (a complicated story for another day) and survived into the 1950s building single-axle utility trailers.