Clowning around in an Austin Seven

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Although some may think differently, in general clowns are there to make you laugh, and the circus is the place to find them. Many clowns drive cars, too. Nothing current, as far as we know, as a clown in an SUV simply isn’t funny. No, a clown car just has to be very old, rickety and temperamental – in other words, just the sort of car that we love.

A well-known clown act is that of the really small car from which a rather incredible number of clowns emerge. An American clown named Lou Jacobs is believed to have been the first to come up with this act in the famous Ringling Brothers circus - his miniature home-made four-wheeler used the motor from a washing machine to drive itself into the arena - but there have been many more.

Apart from this act, there’s the clown car with a will of its own, which has been popular for decades too. These were often heavily modified Ford Model Ts in the USA and Austin Sevens in Britain and Europe. This one here was in use with the German circus Althoff in the 1960s, and you can see it’s been made to fall apart quite cleverly. First the doors fall out, then the wings fall off, the roof and windscreen fold forwards and finally the whole front end folds down with the front wheels collapsing in, too - with a bang and a puff of smoke, no doubt!

Was it sacrilege to do such a thing to a Seven? Perhaps. On the other hand the circus may have given it a new lease of life, giving pleasure to thousands of people before it ended up scrapped anyway. Well, the chances aren’t very high that the vehicle will have survived years of action in the ring. Then again, some clowns drove theirs for decades, and some are in fact still being used!

Words: Jeroen Booij; pictures: Noord-Hollands archive
 

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