From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
THE GOLDEN AGE OF CAR BROCHURE ART: Motoring art has always been highly sought after and works by such well-known motoring artists as the incomparable Gordon Crosby, Roy Nockolds or Peter Helck have entered the art mainstream and are valued accordingly. Books of these and other motoring artists have always been a particularly good investment for the motoring book collector.
Thus it has always surprised me that there is not much more interest in the car brochures of the 1950s and early 1960s when many artists, whose works in the fields of motoring and aviation have since become prized, were employed to produce full colour art by many of the motor manufacturers for their car brochures.
Today, these attractive brochures can often be ound on sale relatively cheaply at auto-jumbles, allowing an interesting collection to be built up relatively easily.
Michael Turner - now pre-eminent in the motoring field - and Frank Wooton - equally eminent in the field of aviation art, are just two of the many fine artists whose early work can be found on car brochures of this period.
Sadly, very little of the art which appears on these brochures is signed by the artist, as it was produced as commercial art, but the styles of the key artists are usually apparent even if it is in a less mature form than we might perhaps associate with their later and better-known work.
This was a golden age of illustration, and in the case of the motor industry it pre-dated the era of huge budgets being spent on television advertising.
The car brochure was the principal selling tool for the manufacturer and great effort was lavished on their production. And of course, apart from magazine and press advertising, there was little else on which to spend advertising budgets.
Interestingly, they didn't always tell the truth, most often exaggerating the roominess of the cars portrayed. Additionally, many of the cars featured have a distinctly American feel to their looks, and all seem still to promise a golden age of motoring freedom to explore the unspoilt and uncluttered countryside, access to which ownership of a car still promised. In particular, it's noticeable that one never sees another car on the brochure roads: in fact, there is never anything to spoil the promise of the "open road" for the motorist who is contemplating purchase of a particular car manufacturer's latest model.
The advertising copy was also less constrained than today's standards would allow, and the blurb which accompanied the brochure for the Vauxhall Cresta shown in the accompanying photographs contains such phrases as "a grand alliance of dignity and dash", but in this case it is the "extras" which are used to make the Vauxhall sales pitch. Whitewall tyres, an "imposing speedbird bonnet mascot", an electric cigarette lighter and extra foam rubber in the front and rear seats - oh, how easily we were satisfied in those now far-off days!
THE FIRST MILITARY MOTORCYCLE: Arising out of my piece on the Rolls-Royce armoured cars recently, a reader asked if I could confirm when the first military use of a motorcycle occurred.
As far as I can ascertain, this was a 1/4 hp Cyclometer motor tricycle supplied to the 26th Middlesex (Cyclist) RV which was used to tow a Maxim machine-gun during the brigade's Easter manoeuvres at Aldershot on March 30th 1899.
The motor tricycle was ridden by CHE Rush of the London Autocar Company, who were the suppliers, and it journeyed from the Corps Headquarters at Chelsea to the camp of the South London Volunteer Brigade at Woking.
Later in the same year, the French army set up a corps of motor cycle dispatch riders, all mounted on motor tricycles.