Car brochures, 1950s to 1980s
Picture the scene: it’s the 1970s and the scrawny urchin has sneaked into the car showroom. He knows where the brochure stand is, and he needs to get there and get a handful before the salesman notices. Mostly the sales staff don’t mind, but sometimes they get sniffy when, clearly, urchins are not about to buy any of their cars. And once the urchin gets home, he diligently adds the brochures to a growing collection.
Fast forward fifty-odd years and the car brochure has largely been supplanted by the PDF or the social media post. Even car showrooms are fewer and farther between. And the urchin? Well he’s marginally less scrawny and is now something to do with the Richard Roberts Archive.
What a thrill then to receive two separate donations of car brochures. One was from Dave Culshaw of Wigan with not one but five banana boxes of car brochures, from the 1950s to 1980s. The other was from Mark Dawber who gave us a suitcase full, from the estate of his late father Royston, a founder member of what is now the Manchester Historic Vehicle Club.
Brochures are, in a sense, the ultimate ad – the chance to showcase a product, to create the desire, to manufacture the ideal setting, to show how happy you and your family will be if only you bought their product. The cars remained impossibly clean despite being photographed on beaches, in muddy fields, anywhere that might suggest that you can indeed take it anywhere, just in case you had the urge once you’d done your weekly shop in it.
The earlier brochures here from the 1950s still use artists’ illustrations, and where they do use photographs, some are heavily touched up (particularly the Metropolitan, where the car looks like it’s floating). Colour is used almost always, and often on lovely quality paper – the budget for some of these brochures could not have been small.
Many of the brands are long gone: from the photos here we have Panhard, DKW, Metropolitan,Mercury, Elva. MG was part of BMC then – not owned by the Chinese as it is now.
Finding a favourite wasn’t easy, but we came down on the Vauxhall VX4/90. From 1964, the cover of this brochure is an artist’s illustration, in colour, of the instrument panel as seen by the driver. He’s (of course it’s a he) wearing driving gloves and he’s on a motorway – and the speedo reads over 90mph. This was before the 70 limit came in and was when motorways were few and far between and associated with glamour. Happy days.
