Nobody chooses where they are born or the time in which they live. Changing your place of residence, even if it means moving to another country or another continent, is a possibility that we can all consider at some point, although whether it becomes a reality depends on the circumstances. Changing times to live as our ancestors did is something that is not possible, unless you are someone like Callum Grubb, a 19-year-old Scottish teenager who has chosen to live in another time: the 1940s.
The boy dresses and acts as if he has gone back in time 80 years. He doesn’t have a cell phone and if he needs to call someone he does it with an old vintage designed rotary dial phone. He has a ‘look’ that connects us with the photos we see of our grandparents when they were young and he dresses in clothes that we consider out of fashion today. As he could not be otherwise, Grubb owns a car in keeping with the era that he likes the most, a black 1938 Austin Cambridge, and a 1952 Raleigh bicycle.
“I have always been fascinated by history. As a child, I looked through my great-grandfather’s prisoner of war diaries and I liked everything related to that time,” Grubb explains to the BBC. Since then he has dedicated himself to collecting all kinds of objects related to the 1940s, including an Austin Cambridge that does not go unnoticed wherever it goes.
The car that Callum Grubb drives was manufactured by Austin, an English company that in 1952 merged with Morris Motor into a new company called British Motor Corporation, maintaining its separate identity. It is one of the most popular vehicles of those years – it was the best-selling model in the 1930s in the United Kingdom – and was on the market between 1932 and 1947, with a total of 290,000 units sold.
The boy has been driving his Austin Cambridge since November 2023. He bought it from a man he met while visiting a museum. The former owner still had the original invoice for the car – 215 pounds in 1938, the equivalent of about 18,000 pounds (about 21,000 euros) today – but he sold it for only 7,000 pounds (about 8,150 euros). Grubb claims that he was saving since he was 13 years old to one day make his dream of owning a vintage car come true.
“Many cars like this are in a museum and are never used. But museums are not their place. They are made to be used and this is what I am doing. “I like to see people’s reaction when I drive it and sound the horn,” he explains to the BBC.
The historic Austin Cambridge is a car that is classified as historic and this allows its owner to enjoy certain benefits. It does not have to pass the MOT, although Grubb assures that he spends a lot of time maintaining and repairing it, and it is also exempt from paying road tax, like all vehicles registered more than 40 years ago. The car lacks seat belts, but in its case they are not mandatory as it is a model manufactured before the measure came into force.
“It’s like going back in time, especially when you go down the old country roads,” says the young man about his experience behind the wheel of the Austin Cambridge. He also explains that the vehicle survived the London bombings of the early 1940s and that it reaches a maximum speed of 50 miles per hour (about 80 km / h).
In addition to doing so with the historic 1938 Austin Cambridge, Callum Grubb moves around the surroundings of Kirkcaldy, a city of 48,000 inhabitants in the northeast of Scotland, with a 1952 Raleigh bicycle. It is a bike of English origin that stands out for its elegant design and simple and is one of the most valued frames today for its vintage style.
