Standard fittings included a sliding roof, opening windscreen and leather upholstery.

The extra power converted the car into what one commentator described as "a particularly lively proposition",[3] although by this time the less-than-lively Austin 12 had been in production for six years with the same body.

The new Austin 12 was introduced in August 1939, at a time when accelerated military spending was overflowing into a domestic consumer boom on the UK market.

Most of the Midlands-based auto-making capacity, with its recently enhanced understanding of mass-producing metal goods, was switched to war supplies: this involved not merely aircraft manufacture but also (for some historians less glamorous) items such as tanks and Jerrycans.

As evidenced on the pictures in an Austin-produced ad at the time of the 1939 introduction, the instrument cluster design was essentially carry-over from the typical layout on prior 1930's Austin cars (and continued on the postwar 8 and 10), basically two large dials directly in front of the driver.