There’s a lot of recurring conceits in car brochures, but one of the most popular has to be the act of driving off the road onto some picturesque plot of land, ideally a grassy field, laying down a blanket, and sitting around and eating some food, ideally brought in wicker baskets or similarly quaint vessels. You know, a picnic.
These brochure picnics usually happen uncomfortably close to the parked car, at least based on the standards of non-car-brochure life. In brochures, though, you want to park right in the middle of whatever lovely area you found, nature be damned. The other key thing about these car brochure picnics is that, generally, everyone should look pretty thrilled to be there.
That’s where this 1973 Vauxhall brochure takes a different approach: I’ve never seen such a sullen and miserable looking group of people at a picnic. I mean, look at this:
Sure, we can only see two faces here, the little girl and whom I presume to be the mom, but holy shit do they look pissed. Is this the aftermath of a fight? Little girl looks like she’s still steaming, and mom looks like she’s questioning every decision she’s ever made. The body language of the other two hardly seems elated, either. You can almost feel the oppressive silence and leaden glowering looks. I’m glad I’m not there.
Compare that to almost any other car brochure picnic:
Citroëns, Fiats, Fords, photographs and illustrations, all of these at least show picnics happening with some degree of engagement, even joy! I mean, it’s a freaking picnic! You’ve willingly chosen to drive out somewhere and eat on a blanket by the car; you don’t do that unless you’re pretty damn sure you’re going to enjoy it!
There’s other grim-looking people in this brochure, too. Check out this dude:
I like that Vauxhall wagon, though – the fastback design, that somewhat AMC Pacer-like rear quarter window, the bold yellow – the car is plenty cool. What I don’t get is why the guy cramming it full of ornate, overdone furniture looks like he’s just been dumped and told to take his shit and leave:
Is that a leather suit, by the way? Is that part of why he got dumped?
Okay, one last thing about these Vauxhaulls that makes no sense to me: the naming convention.
So, the various models are named for their engine sizes, which come in several sizes: 1256cc/62.5 bhp, 1759cc/90 bhp, 2279cc/122hp, and finally the six-banger 3.3-liter one making a respectable 140 bhp. Here’s what I don’t get: the various models using these engines were named the 1256, 1800, 2300, and 3300. Why didn’t the 1256 get rounded up like all the others? Shouldn’t that have been the 1300?
Was this some way to make the entry-level people just feel bad? Like, if you don’t spend the money, you don’t get your name-number rounded up? Or do they assume that such frugal people don’t go in for such fripperies as rounding numbers? It’s not like 1256 is such a catchy name? Is it?
Maybe that’s what the picnic family was arguing about? That’d make sense.
I’m pretty sure the sour faces is because that 1970 Pouilly Fuissé is corked, which explains why the picnic is over and the bottle has only been tested. Can’t blame the Vauxhall for that.
I used to enjoy a good jello picnic. They started off so tasty, with a veritable smorgasbord of flavors! But over time, they got kinda salty, and then just bland. Finally, some dipshit threw a bunch of Herbs and and just spoiled the whole damn thing! Fucking Herbs!
They’re hostages, and Stockholm Syndrome hasn’t taken effect yet. “Dad” has a pistol in his right hand.
Why is there a seam in the middle of his back? Maybe the “Dad” is something wearing a human suit.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that seam doesn’t even appear to be centered…it’s off the right a couple of inches.
“We’re staying together… for the kids.”
“Hour four. The photoshoot continues. We’re still ‘waiting for the light’ according to the damnable photographer. How long do I have sit in these weeds? I used to model clothes for Harrods.”
Damn, I bet the even the “chocolate” desserts mom was handing out were made of carob.
Maybe everyone’s in a mood because they watched the latest Vauxhall advert on TV? https://www.theautopian.com/you-need-to-watch-this-charming-yet-terrifying-vauxhall-ad-from-1973/
Looks like they had Werner Herzog in charge of this ad.
They guy in the sharkskin suit loading up the car is sullen because he’s just come from the reading of his granny’s will and this is the stuff he got.
yup. absolutely sharkskin. and my first reaction was the wife just 86’d him, but then i saw the family bible and figured it was a post funeral scavenge (beating his sibs to that amazing chair & mirror, but clearly feeling guilty about it).
I would assume they didn’t round up to avoid unlucky 13
That was my thought as well.
This is gold, Jason… GOLD!
What is that patch of yellow next to mom’s elbow? Has she set the picnic basket on fire in an attempt to burn down the Vauxhall?
Is that a dog? Is that why the family is pissed? Did the dog just fart on the jello-mold?
A little backstory to clear this up. The young Jim Henson family is traveling through Europe trying to drum up support for their fledgling company. Jim in maniacal pursuit of perfection has insisted that his wife bonds with the Big Bird costume, and to keep it by her side at all times, hence her expression. The kids both want to play Oscar.
Are you sure they don’t just have RBM (Resting British Face)?
Not to pick nits, but wouldn’t it be RBF? I think RBM is a different thing.
you are correct and I don’t know why I typed that lol
I think Leather Suit Guy is a wetworker IRL but found out he somehow didn’t make the cut to be in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Maybe they thought there would be some confusion with the earlier VW 1300.
That’s not Mom. That’s the eldest daughter. Mom just died and Dad took her and the twins out for a picnic to try to cheer everyone up a bit. Merely being in a Vauxhall of that era soured their moods further. But upon opening the basket the depression really set in when they realized that all they had to eat was British food.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-TALK.
I take it your career writing for the greeting card company was short-lived.
I write obituaries now.
Well, yeah, it’s Thatcher-Era Great Britain. You’d be sullen too if you were there.
Reminds me of Scarfolk.
Heath not Thatcher. And that’s not an improvement.
Vauxhall’s slogan was “Once driven, forever smitten” and I’d say these folks look like they’ve been smited. (Smote?). I prefer to think they’re all upset because Dad got the dates for the Isle of Wight festival wrong.
Oh man that 2-door wagon one…bites lip.
Picnics kind of suck.
Right! wind, bugs, neurotic parents freaking out that everything is not perfect.
I hate sitting on the ground.
Hate.
It.
Even the car looks cross. And cross-eyed. Mom is annoyed because Dad forgot the corkscrew.
The Citroën family is happiest because they brought a little table, unlike those Vauxhall people at their low-effort picnic with plates teetering atop the giant wrinkles in the blanket.
Ford Dad is acquiring a giant, permanent grass stain on the left knee of his white pants. A bold choice in picnic attire.
Fun fact, the front and rear seats of the early 2CV were removable for this very purpose. That’s what they’re sitting on.
I guess it’s advertising that the base model has a much bigger engine than the earlier models, which had to make do with a puny 1159cc mill.
I was a little child about that age, in the early 1970s that is just how it felt back then. The 70s were horrid.
I’m a little younger, but I’m of the age where I just don’t understand the mass glorification of the 80s. Sure, it was awesome for the really wealthy, but everyone I knew in the middle class was just eking by in mediocrity on the back end of years of bloated mortgage payments, the era of both parents having to work (wage stagnation), latchkey kids, awful cars, and orange carpet in every room for some reason.
As far as this picture, I would say this would be Denmark, “the happiest country in the world, but you wouldn’t know it by the people’s faces or the sheer volume of death metal coming from there.”
I lived through the 1980s (11-21 years old, the formative years) I hated nearly all of it. I was a poor unathletic nerd in a very very wealthy school district. I hated the pop music, clothes, purity culture, cigarette smoke everywhere, STD panic, politics, etc. The poverty and neglect did make us tough.
I’m of a similar age, and what always gets me is the contemporary pop culture depictions of the era. The general color scheme was not Miami Vice pastel or dayglo neon, it was mostly…brown. A lot of brown. And the cars generally promised more than they delivered. I remember being awed by the LCD digital clock in a friend’s parents’ car.
Wall to wall wood paneling.
oh dear god, the grief i got for wearing a “salmon” t-shirt to track practice when everything else was dirty…
Yeah, right? Most people’s living rooms didn’t look like the Huxtable’s- they looked like the Conner’s.
I was born in ’73, so I was 7-17 through the 80’s and remember most everything pretty well.
I was one of those latchkey kids, one of the first generation to have a lot of divorce and single parents and all that. Honestly, I don’t look back on it as being bad and I do understand the nostalgia.
Sure, you can say that it was only good for the wealthy. That wasn’t really true as there were plenty of areas where middle class growth was in the professional sectors of the economy. Not so much for manufacturing and other blue-collar working sectors. A lot of people had a lot more job mobility than compared to the 70’s. And maybe that’s the real reason people have a lot of nostalgia; it was just better than the malaise of the 70’s.
I do think there was a lot more optimism and also novelty of the era that we hadn’t experienced before: Computers were actually becoming a thing, used across a variety of media and professional advancement via the tech sector started in the 70’s but really took off through the 80’s.
People may not be a fan of the synth music and Euro-pop that defined the age, but it was truly a new sound and people like new things. Sure, the 70’s gave us the first synthesizer for that electronic sound but it was really taken to new levels in the 80’s. Then MTV and music videos came along. To a young teenager that I was that was truly huge.
Movies and TV came with a whole new world of special effects and if you were into Sci-Fi it was a new world where it wasn’t just a low-budget joke of a thing.
I think novelty just becomes its own thing through the lens of nostalgia. Whatever you’re into when you’re coming of age you will look back on with some varying level of wistfulness, maybe a touch of regret and of course that bottled-up and narcotic-level of nostalgia. It’s a hell of a drug.