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| Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 — © John Corney 2026 |
This one has a real backstory, and I'd like to tell it properly.
An Auckland Sighting
On one of my annual visits home to New Zealand, I was walking through central Auckland — at the corner of Queen Street and Karangahape Road (K Road, as everyone calls it) — when a small yellow car went past me and stopped me mid-stride. It was a beautifully kept Austin A35, one of the little British runabouts that were everywhere in New Zealand when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. Driving it was a woman of a certain age with the confident bearing of someone who had been driving that same car, or one like it, for decades. She looked entirely at home behind the wheel. She belonged to the car and the car belonged to her, and neither of them was in any hurry to change.
If you know Auckland, that particular corner will register: Queen Street runs down the spine of the city, and K Road is its long-established bohemian cross-street, with a history of vintage shops, live music venues, characterful old buildings and home to Auckland's more colourful nightlife. A vintage yellow Austin A35 turning that corner, driven by a woman who looked like she belonged in it, was almost too perfect a moment — the car, the driver, and the location all speaking the same language.
I got the photograph before she drove off. Here's the car (with the driver removed for privacy, since I didn't have the chance to ask her):
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| The Austin A35 at the corner of Queen Street and K Road, Auckland — the real car that inspired the illustration. |
The Austin A35 was produced from 1956 to 1959, right around when I was born, and part of a whole generation of small, sensible, affordable British cars that populated post-war New Zealand roads and became many families' first vehicle. They were friendly little things — you can see it in the shape, the rounded headlights, the vertical grille, the sense that the whole car might be smiling at you. They aged well too, which is why the surviving A35s tend to be beloved. Nobody keeps an Austin A35 running in 2026 by accident. Someone loves that car.
Why the Sighting Mattered
The reason the moment stayed with me is that the woman in the driver's seat reminded me of my mother.
My mother, Elva, lived most of her life in Whanganui, spelled "Wanganui" when I was growing up there. She had nine children, and she raised us in the way women of her generation and place raised families — mostly on her own energy, without a great deal of fuss, and without the option of putting her own preferences first for a very long time. When the youngest of us was grown and gone, and she was well into her fifties, she made a decision my father was not entirely comfortable with: she bought her own motor scooter — a Suzuki — so she could commute to work independently. He wasn't sure this was quite proper for a woman her age. She was sure enough for both of them. She rode it, and enjoyed it, and never looked back.
The woman in the Austin A35 that morning on K Road had the same air. Not defiant exactly — she wasn't proving a point to anyone — just entirely, unapologetically at ease in her own life. Driving her own car, going her own places, on her own schedule. That look is one I recognise. It's the look my mother had, in a different vehicle, in a different decade, in a different town.
From Photograph to Illustration
I decided to make her a piece from this photo to be part of my "Little Old Lady" collection. Not a portrait of her — I never spoke to the actual woman, and I don't know who she was — but a cartoon that would try to capture the whole spirit of the moment. The car became my starting point: same buttery yellow, same friendly rounded shape, same chrome grille. Then I imagined the driver as the archetype she seemed to be: silver hair caught in the wind, coral scarf trailing behind, oversized sunglasses, laughing, waving to whoever she's just left in her rear-view mirror. I added a small red heart on the side of the car, because it seemed like the kind of thing that woman would have painted on hers.
The result is Cool Granny in Her Austin A35. It's not a portrait; it's a tribute. To one particular woman I saw for about fifteen seconds on K Road. To my mother in her fifties on her Suzuki in Whanganui. To every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn.
The Little Old Lady Collection
This piece joins my ongoing Little Old Lady collection on Redbubble, which began with an earlier illustration of a cool granny on a skateboard. Different vehicle, same spirit. The collection is meant as a small, cheerful, ongoing tribute to older women who refuse to slow down, dress boringly, or ask permission — the ones whose second acts turn out to be at least as interesting as the first.
Available on Redbubble
Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — greeting cards, t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, stickers, art prints, throw pillows, notebooks, and more. It makes a perfect card for a beloved grandmother, mother, aunt, or friend on a birthday or milestone. It's also a fine gift for anyone who intends to grow into exactly this sort of older woman herself.
Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 on Redbubble
You can browse the full Little Old Lady collection, and everything else, at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one path).
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