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.
“Hey Boo Boo, Let’s Go Get Us a
Pic-a-nic Basket”
I would look the same I think: The seventies Vauxhalls were some of the worst cars ever made! Try googling how far the rear windows will roll down in one of these, or what happens if you rev up the engine. Not to mention the bland styling, where they just reused other GM ideas, like the Buick grille.
After that generation of Vauxhalls, they seized creating their own models, and just went with rebadged german Opels. That’s how bad they were..
Oh, not EVERYTHING were bad about them, Vauxhall had a pretty cool logo, with the griffin, almost at Alfa Romeo or old Rover level of bad ass! As a graphic designer I appreciate these kind of things 🙂
It may very well be that they avoided 1300 to avoid “bad luck”, or maybe just suspected consumer apprehension.
So so glum and depressing! Terrible UK picnic food included. Far cry from the Dodge ‘Adult Toys’ advertising a few years later… forget food, just some cold brews, cigarettes, and fun with beautiful people. This is peak bad ass. https://thumb.spokesman.com/L38JP01xN1-IwUw_xFOaNkXqbuM=/2500×0/media.spokesman.com/photos/2012/11/16/171.jpg
Everything about this hit had gone wrong, from the moment he picked up the rental, dead tired from the overnight flight from Miami, and all they had was friggin lemon yellow station wagon. Way to be inconspicuous. When he pulled up at the house, misjudged the crappy Vauxhall brakes and bumped right into the garage door, he nearly lost it. Why did the client insist the job had to be at midday? Lucky the target was glued to the telly, never even heard him enter. But then a neighbor showed up at the door and he had to think fast. “Just taking some furniture for cleaning. They’re not home, left me the key. Here, I just need to grab that little stool.” If she hadn’t been so nosy, she’d still be alive and he wouldn’t need a place to dump a chair.
Little Girl: Mom made her cole slaw again. i hate cole slaw.
I’m going to murder everyone in their sleep tonight with an axe.
Who has a crooked spine and brings haggis to a picnic? This guy!
They had meant to drive further, but the Vauxhall “failed to proceed” and now they are eating their food thirty feet from the road, waiting for the AA to show up.
Point of order, you were not getting the 3.3 straight six in the HC Viva (the red coupe and brown estate in the last tow images). It came in the FE Victor/Ventora (the car in the top image and the yellow wagon). They couldn’t be had with the 1256 unit either.
It was Great Britain in 1973. Of course they were all fucking miserable. Not uncoincidentally also the year I was hatched.
Typical British during the 1970s with frequent strikes, blackouts, IRA bombs, galloping inflations, etc.
As Suit Guy strolls away from the estate sale with the footstool and magazine rack to accompany the new-to-him chair and mirror, he slowly begins to realize that the chair is not the sumptuous golden hue that first caught his eye, but is instead yellow. He will wrangle this yellow chair into his yellow car, and when he gets home he will somehow get the whole mess into what must surely be the amber and harvest gold-toned living room of his split-level house. He will curse as the casters – too small to really be functional on a piece of furniture this size – immediately become entangled in the deep pile of the carpet.
They say that people look a lot like their cars.
In this case – 1973 was a morose year.
Agreed… I was there… looking like that boy at the picnic.
That is the actual face of a parent with two young children that close in age. It’s a 10 year beating and she’s like only halfway through it. Ask me how I know.
The guy in the leather suit is loading his parents furniture to take to the estate sale.
They had not spoken in 14 years… but he can still remember being a happy child sitting in the fancy chair playing board games. Then his fathers heavy drinking and the violence that followed.
70’s UK summarized in a set of photos. Hopeless, washed out and depressed.
I hated Sunday afternoons. Dan would always insist we go somewhere in the miserable Vauxhall, sit outside and eat English food. Mom’s Spanish “friend” Javier, was a lot more fun.
Given the photo was taken in the UK, I do hope the little girl wasn’t “pissed”, which in British English means drunk or inebriated, and given the wine bottle isn’t open, that’s unlikely. “Pissed-off”, maybe, but not “pissed”.
I’m going with the idea that everything sharkskin suit dude got in the divorce is right there in that picture, including the car. And he’s walling out of the house after meeting his ex’s personal trainer, who just happened to be there.
As for the picnics, how do these people all manage to get their cars into these pastoral locations without leaving tire tracks?
The 1256 was badged that way to distinguish it from the bigger-engined models aimed at private buyers. Strictly fleet-spec, and the sales reps were battling each other to have an L, DL, S or whatever appended to it.
The fleet equivalent of winning a cheap set of steak knives, in a far more class-conscious society than the setting of Glengarry.
The prize Caddy in that never made sense to me. An Eldorado. A 2-door – for a realtor!? Was it meant to keep the star salesman from surpassing Alec Baldwin, by pissing off at least one of every couple he shows a house to after the win?
Oooooohhhhhh…….
That’s mom, but it’s “new mommy” and the kids haven’t quite warmed up to Dad’s fresh trophy-wife yet. New mommy is pissed because old mommy got the Jag in the divorce and now she has to ride around in this derpy Vauxhall.
Mom has just pointed out that, as soon as the new 1970s vauxhall is out in the peace and quiet of the countryside, she can actually hear it rusting away.