The Austin Maxi
Weekend / 30th January 1974
A brave attempt to challenge the dominance of the Range Rover, but the Maxi was only likely to suit country pursuits that were on-road.
Viva Del Monte
Woman's Weekly / 18th April 1967
Horray! It’s another old school competition! This one is all about listing the supposed features of the car, plus a tie-breaker, although this article shows that this ad ‘talks up’ the car to an alarming extent. There’s a famous story about the Vauxhall Viva’s rear fuel tank exploding when the car took a shunt from the back, but I can’t find a citation on the internet. I’d love to know what the winning tie-breaker sentence was!
Tags: competition, food, motoring
‘Ow about none of ’em?
Woman's Own / 14th July 1967
With apologies to Harry Hill. Don’t you just love old-style magazine competitions like these? Here’s you can put a series of photographs of Michael Caine in order of which one arouses you the most. I don’t know who was the judge of this silly competition, but I’m guessing that they probably pulled the winning entry out of a hat. Nice prize though (the cash prize is roughly an average woman’s yearly salary at that time): but I suppose at 3d a guess, you only need 120,000 entries (assuming they all have only one guess, with 4 attempts = 1s, and 20,000s making up £1000*) before you start turning a profit!
* I think my maths is correct, but let me know if you can be bothered checking!
Tags: competition, Michael Caine, motoring
The BSM Reach Out to Women
Woman's Own / 21st March 1969
Oh my. Don’t you just love the sorts of adverts which patronise women horribly, whilst being under the impression they’re doing them a favour? Reading this advert, you wouldn’t have thought that women in the UK have actually been driving since around WW1, although, to be fair, I do remember my mother telling me that ‘women didn’t drive’ when she was growing up. I’m particularly tickled by the idea that, because housewives were coping with more complex domestic gadgets by 1969, they were better equipped to tackle a big scary car. You can’t fault the moral “a washing machine today – the family chauffeur tomorrow!”, either. Oh. Sorry. You can.
Tags: blatant sexism, BSM, marriage, motherhood, motoring, retail