Vintage car Ad's.

We often hear the phrase 'Golden age' bandied about when referring to some by gone halcyon days.

Memories, often tinged with those rose tinted spectacles, recall to mind a better time, a time when things were done differently.
There is the 'Golden age of steam' for railway fans, the 'Golden age of Cinema' for film buffs, and for me there was also a 'Golden age' of advertising.

Looking at today's ad's selling anything between new cars to a jar of coffee one can't help notice the superficiality of it all. The slick modern car ad's with their CGI special effects are designed to entertain, (they need to capture a nano second of the ever dwindling attention span modern consumers possess) just long enough to persuade them to buy.
Who can also remember the dreadful old coffee ad' that was more like a romantic soap opera?...will they?...won't they?...Zzzzzzz

I set myself to try and determine if, in the case of Automobile advertising there was a 'Golden age' and if so when was that, and why?
Firstly I set out to quantify what it was about those old ad's that attracted me, and that became immediately apparent - they were works of art!
As in many areas of commerce, with the uptake of modern technology comes 'progress', and the older, obsolete technology thus replaced fades away and eventually all but dies.
We can see this today in trades such as signwriting or film photography for to name a couple, when was the last time that you saw a traditional signwriter with mahlstick and brush? "it's all computers these days innit mate?"


From a commercial standpoint, anything that takes less time to do is obviously more profitable, and a photograph is infinitely less expensive than an illustration, so it makes good business sense to use the latest options available...your competitors certainly will!

So I have set my own personal 'Golden age' of Auto advertising as the period from around 1930 to 1970, and the reasons for this I'll give here.
To begin with the picture at the head of this post which advertises Gulf petroleum. As you can see this is a painting which today would be acceptable on its own as a work of art depicting of early motoring, the advertising content of the painting is very subtle with just the pump head to plug the product.
This particular image is actually from 1914, but as very few people owned cars at that time and therefore ad's were rather specialised this is why I chose the starting date for my golden age to be a little later.



In the 19thC it became clear that the advertisers greatest weapon was the illustrator, the Victorians used artists, even famous ones such as Millais to advertise their wares, and with photography in it's infancy the colour and 'realism' needed to portray goods in a favourable light was still the task of these illustrators.
Even well into the 1950's when the Oldsmobile ad above was made, illustrators still provided the cover artwork for many vehicles. I believe this ads a charm to the brochure that a mere photo wouldn't have managed to do, I remember reading and collecting old magazines and brochures of the '40's and 50's which were full of such images!

As time moved along and photography began to creep into the auto-ad' there came a new type of advertisement - the airbrushed photo. These seem to be the curious transitional phase between the pure illustration of the 1940's and the exclusively photographic ads of the 1970's.

Anyone who remembers the old 'Practical Motorist' magazine of the 1950's will remember the cover illustrations that were a perfect example of this type of artwork, which was essentially a photograph which was then 'painted over' to give the look of an illustration!

Some manufacturers used a style of brochure that contained both illustration and photography, as this 1960 Dodge line-up shows.


Just look at the lines of that tail! Some may say brash, but certainly bold styling typified the late 50's and early 60's designs. How sad it is to think of these cars today, rotting away in some rural junkyard.


Here in Britain our vehicles were less outlandish, but the ad's for them tended to contain an element of practicality or humour. As I mentioned in an earlier post 1950s Britain was a time of austerity, of make do and mend practicality, and this was reflected in the motor ad's.
A selling point might be the MPG figure, and the ability to carry 'four adults in comfort' rather than the amount of chrome the vehicle wore.

In the '60's that theme of practicality also coincided with an increase in women drivers as the nation took to wheels, giving rise to ads specifically emphasising the sort of car that the ad men felt displayed properties attractive to women, such as being simple to drive and of course ease of parking... I leave the inference of those requirements to you dear reader!


With the coming of the 1970's photography had all but replaced those charmingly rendered illustrations for automotive advertising and I have only included them here not for their artwork, but more for the humour.
My 'Golden age' of auto ads conclude with this decade as the one that finally ended the use of the illustrator as the preferred choice for adverts and brochures. Photography was cheaper, but they at least still supported the photographic content with humour, (a humour that in some cases would perhaps not be found acceptable today) and we are in my opinion poorer for the loss of that.


I'm sure that there will be those that may conclude the use of such 'sexist' humour in advertising is better left in the un-PC 1970's, personally I don't entirely agree.
While not wishing to cause deliberate offence, I do miss the fact that we aren't able to gently poke fun any more without someone deciding that it's wrong to do so.
Today, and sadly an industry seems to have arisen dedicated to 'taking offence', and as a result printed Auto advertising has become either dull and factual, or aimed at the ridiculously aspirational.

I leave my last old car ad as an indication of how in today's society, not only have we lost the style, romance, and often beauty of the illustrators art, but how society itself has been changed.

Could you imagine advertising a car using the terms 'Gay' and 'well endowed' today as Chrysler did in the 1950's?.... hmmm...wonder if it would sell?

When old meets new.

Sometimes working with new technology can be a little daunting, I remember the first time that I ever sat before a computer keyboard how impossibly new it all seemed!

Being a 'traditional' Artist, in that I still work in oils on canvas (a process that has seen several centuries of use) I look upon the emerging type of computer generated, or digital art with a mixture of some bemusement and not a little awe.
Some of the better exponents of this art can produce images that are astoundingly good, and more and more they are applying this 21st Century technology to recreate early 20th century images!

The image above is one such example, it's a work in progress done - not by me I might add, but by someone far more adept in the use of computer digital art sofware. The vehicle represented is an Austin Seven Ulster, and the other photos in this series can be found by clicking on the link.

New York 1945

From London in the 50/60's to New York 1945.

Take a look at those wonderful old cars...truly 'Jellymould jalopies!' While the daily hustle and bustle of the people of new York goes on all around, the sturdy old vehicles battle through the icy winter streets.
Each time I come across a photograph of a long abandoned car of the '40's I wonder how it looked back in it's day, and to what kind of use was it put?

Well here's the answer, for many they were working vehicles, Taxis and delivery trucks are nose to tail while parked at the side walk are the private vehicles of the shoppers, or possibly the shop owners?
The one that stands out for me is the very clean car parked on the right hand side, obviously that car has been garaged overnight and looks pretty well looked after....I wonder if it survived?

London 1960

Just an interesting old colour picture that I came across, entitled 'London in 1960'.

How many of those old vehicles still survive I wonder? Perhaps none at all, but London was certainly more colourful and picturesque then, than it is today!
As you can see most of the stuff on the road is of pre-war design , I would suspect the photo was actually a little earlier, perhaps even early to mid 1950's.

A time of optimism.

I mentioned in an earlier post how the 1960's became a pivotal time in our history.
From a nation enduring the post war gloom of the 1940's, through to the austerity of the 1950's, Britain seemed to be on the brink of something new.

Many of us Brits watched with envy as our counterparts in the United States celebrated the post war era by developing ever more outlandish yet beautiful cars.
Chrome, power steering, automatic folding roofs, radios, heaters, air conditioning and more were fitted to a host of '50's U.S. models, while we Brits made do with re-introduced 1930's designs, or even more basic '50's designs! (we didn't even have side window winders on some models!)

For the working man during this period, steady employment meant that he could trade in his motorcycle and sidecar and become for the first time ever a car owner! The choice was limited, but the number of cars on the road gradually increased.

Then in the late 50's - BAM! American styling influences hit the Uk, through the grey and grimy streets of our industrial towns came sightings of huge (to us) flash, cars in the most outrageous colours!
At the end of the 1950's, credit became easier to obtain and the impact was amazing. Streets now glittered with brash new vehicles, now we too had style and fins and chrome were all the rage, gone were the black, greys and greens of the pre 60's car liveries.

One of the most radical British Automotive designs of the 1950's was undoubtedly the PA Cresta.
With its transatlantic styling and plush six seater cabin the Cresta could waft along on just a pur of the big six cylinder engine.
I can just imagine the 'Harrumphs' uttered by the old boys in their gentlemans clubs, as they shuddered at the thought of such ostentation!

The painting above is of a 1959 PA Vauxhall Cresta, the car was bright pink....unheard of by jove!
I painted a pink one with a white roof as this was identical to the car that my uncle owned back in '65, I still remember vividly riding in it one night and being too small to see out of the windscreen!

For Britain, cars like this heralded a new era, one of optimism. No more 'make do and mend' for us, now the age of consumerism had dawned.

Snow, ice, and the automobile.

It's the age old problem, snow and ice are not conducive to the long life of an Automobile!

Different strategies are employed by the many local authorities to keep the roads ice free, but by far the worst in terms of the harm caused to old cars is the policy of laying down road salt! How many wonderful old vehicles have been reduced to scrap in a few short years by the rust bug largely cause by road salt corrosion!

I suppose the argument goes that if the roads weren't salted then there would be more accidents and possible loss of life, I accept that point but surely a less corrosive ice inhibitor could have been developed?

In the mid 20th Century, the Ford Anglia/Popular range (subject of the painting above) were sold as 'The cheapest car that money can buy'.
The pre-war design was simple, rugged, and reliable - no creature comforts here, even a sun visor was an optional extra!

Needless to say that in the post war austerity of Britain they sold in their thousands. I can remember a time when there seemed to be quite literally, one in every street. Motoring in those days must have been a much hardier experience to that of today, with no standard equipment such as heater, windscreen washers, or indicators, and a mere 6v electrical system to light the way, our fathers and grandfathers battled the freezing winters and 'pea soup-er' fogs of the day.

In the 1970's these old cars became a favourite of the Hot Rod crowd, with many being customised almost beyond recognition.
Such was the simplicity, and ruggedness of manufacture there are still surviving examples around, some of the most amazing survivors are those that have lain abandoned for many years and come to light needing little more than re commissioning to drive again!

In the painting above I have shown a typical 1950's Ford Anglia or Popular parked by the roadside. In Britain, the 1950's seemed to be the demarcation of the old world and the new, Victorian buildings and pre-war motor cars still served purposefully in the '50's, all that was to change in the brash new 1960's.

Winter arrives.

Over last couple of weeks or so here in the UK the temperatures have dropped hailing the onset of winter proper.

To continue my theme of 'Beautiful decay' I suppose that one could consider much of the changes around us to be a sort of decay when compared to warmer months, the trees have now lost their leaves, and the weather has become much less hospitable.

Looking out on a frosty morning with the sun rising a sort of lemon yellow, the rooftops glistening, and the shadows containing a strong blue tone, once again reminds me of the beauty that is revealed during wintertime.
The other morning I saw from my front window a spiders web, stretching from one garden bush to another, and frozen white it revealed structures that only our most complicated computers could design!

My painting for this week harks back to my previous post about the Citroen 2cv 'Ugly Duckling', here I have painted a 1960's AZ version with the front 'suicide' doors, and the double chevron grille (which was one of the most popular types).

Sitting next to an old French petrol pump, both have been considered obsolete for years and yet here combine with winter to bring a scene of colourful nostalgia!