Austin Whippet

The Austin Whippet was a small British single-seat biplane light aircraft designed and built by the Austin Motor Company just after the First World War. John Kenworthy, Austin's chief designer, drew it in 1919 for the amateur private pilot, expecting a boom in private flying. It had a fabric covered steel tube fuselage and single-bay folding wooden wings braced by streamlined steel struts rather than rigging wires. The prototype used a two-cylinder horizontally opposed engine, while the four production aircraft had an Anzani six-cylinder radial. Only five were built before Austin left aircraft production in 1920 as the postwar depression cut sales. Two went to New Zealand, one to Argentina, and a replica is displayed in Doncaster.