The Austin Motor Company A series is a small straight-4 automobile engine. Launched in 1951 with the Austin A30, production lasted until 2000 in the Mini. It used a cast-iron block and cylinder head, and a steel crankshaft with 3 main bearings. The camshaft ran in the cylinder block, driven by a single-row chain for most applications, and with tappets sliding in the block, accessible through pressed steel side covers for most applications, and with overhead valves operated through rockers. The cylinder blocks are not interchangeable between versions intended for conventional end-on mounted gearboxes and the 'in-sump' transaxle used on BMC/BL front wheel drive models such as the Mini. The cylinder head for the overhead-valve version of the A-series engine was designed by Harry Weslake – a cylinder head specialist famed for his involvement in SS (Jaguar) engines and several F1-title winning engines. Although a "clean sheet" design, the A series owed much to established Austin engine design practise, resembling in general design (including the Weslake head) and overall appearance a scaled-down version of the 1200cc overhead-valve engine first seen in the Austin A40 Devon which would form the basis of the later B-series engine. The A-series design, along with particularly the B-Series, was licensed by Nissan of Japan. Many changes were made for the initial OHV Nissan E engine. An early change was to incorporate a 5 main bearing crank. The cylinder head was modified by swapping plugs and ports, plugs fitted between pushrods and 8 ports eliminated the Siamesed inlet and exhaust ports. Nissan modified the design into the later Nissan A engine that was launched in 1966 with an aluminium head and wedge combustion chambers. It became the basis for many of their following engines notably the later OHC Nissan E engine, was scaled up into Nissan CA engine and ultimately the DOHC CA18DET as well as scaled down into the Nissan MA engine. All these engines show their lineage by the characteristic un-skirted crankcase block of the BMC A series, but with the A and E having the camshaft moved to the right side allowing greater port areas, and a mounting on the right wall of the crankcase for the oil pump whereas the BMC A series had the oil pump at the back end of the left-side camshaft. Engine family list All engines had a cast iron head and block, two valves per cylinder in