The Austin Twelve was introduced by the Austin Motor Company in 1921. It was the second of Herbert Austin's post World War I models and was in many ways a scaled-down version of his Austin Twenty, introduced in 1919. The slower than expected sales of the Twenty brought about this divergence from his intended one-model policy. The Twelve was announced at the beginning of November 1921 after Austin's company had been in receivership for six months. The number twelve refers to its fiscal horse power (12.8) rather than its bhp which was 20 and later 27. The long stroke engines encouraged by the tax regime, 72 x 102 later 72 x 114.5, had much greater low speed torque than the bhp rating suggests.