Motoring Fads

[Richard A Thackeray]

Not really a fad but you don’t see these anymore. Ferry companies, motoring organisations all produced their own branded GB stickers. They used come free with your ferry tickets or European travel insurance

View attachment 551136

So did the RAC & AA

I actually found these in my archives, along with my old RAC box key!!
Taken in May '19

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Easy Start.
Clip on wings to push wipers onto the screen.
Pin striping.

Of course, there's the infamous Aussie equivilant!!

Adhesive pin-striping on a roll

 

[screenman]

Of course, there's the infamous Aussie equivilant!!

Adhesive pin-striping on a roll

Bought and used loads of it in the eighties, there even used to be guys going around the car sites weekly doing it for dealers.

 

[Blue Hills]

Has anyone mentioned plastic gold and red velvet tissue box covers on the parcel shelf, yet? 🤔

For folk who used a lot of tissues in the back of cars?

 

[PeteXXX]

For folk who used a lot of tissues in the back of cars?

And don't like their tissues getting dusty..

 

[Bazzer]

Spot Lights on the grille. My first Escort MK2 did have them, fitted before I had it. Electric ariel - they weren't boingy rubber roof ones then, so you needed one that popped away so the scally's didn't snap it off.

Metros had hydro elastic band suspension, with grease ports...

The spot lights reference reminded me of an incident I had near Halifax years ago. A Fiesta with a line of spot lights rear ended me at a junction. The lights happened to be exactly at the level of my Golf's bumper and the line of them had all neatly folded into the Fiesta's bonnet. Aside from a few scratches on my bumper my car was undamaged, but he was going to need a new set of spotlights and bonnet.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Spot Lights on the grille. My first Escort MK2 did have them, fitted before I had it. Electric ariel - they weren't boingy rubber roof ones then, so you needed one that popped away so the scally's didn't snap it off.

I had a pair on my first car, a Vauxhall Chevette (hatch)
I remember I bought them from Larkspeed (or was in Ripspeed) that was in CrossGates, at the east side of Leeds
(they had a shop behind the Arndale Centre)


They weren't Cibies, or Hella, though
KC Dayliters, with the smiley covers

 

[raleighnut]

Manual chokes weren't exactly a fad though were they?
I thought they were needed - at the time.
I well remember my Dad's Viva and the system I was supposed to use to get it started.
Never quite knew if I'd come out of the cinema to find it wouldn't start.
Supposedly you risked "flooding the engine", whatever that was, if you overdid it in your desperation to get home.

In the days of mechanical fuel pumps when you parked a car with a hot engine the heat causes the petrol in the carburettor to evaporate and it takes a fair bit of engine cranking to fill the fuel bowl to supply the engine. this is even worse on non crossflow engines where the exhaust is directly below the intake.

 

[raleighnut]

I don't think I imagined/dreamed this.
I seem to remember that when I was very young, sometime in the 60s, there was a brief fashion for putting stickers on your car (usually the rear window I think) that made it look as if you had bullet holes in it.
Suppose it was supposed to make it look as if you had an exciting life in your underpowered runabout, running roadblocks or something.

Billy Connolly's cousin John had them stuck to his spectacles.

 

[weareHKR]

Cushions on the rear parcel shelf...

 

[BoldonLad]

The number of guys that were squashed under their cars. Usually on a Saturday morning. Caused by people leaving cars on jacks and not propping them up correctly. That was often in the newspapers.

That happened to my next door neighbour. Fortunately for him, I was busy doing first aid on my car, and saw what had happened, I was able to quickly re-position jack and get him out!

 

[BoldonLad]

And these for the windscreen.
View attachment 551446

My first car (1953 Ford 100E Anglia) had one of those!

 

[Vantage]

It happened to my dad. His Volvo 340 dropped on him. How the hell he wasn't killed is beyond me.

 

[Pale Rider]

In the days of mechanical fuel pumps when you parked a car with a hot engine the heat causes the petrol in the carburettor to evaporate and it takes a fair bit of engine cranking to fill the fuel bowl to supply the engine. this is even worse on non crossflow engines where the exhaust is directly below the intake.

Known as percolation.

For some reason, Triumph Heralds were particularly prone to it.

The simple answer was to lift the bonnet and smoke a cigarette - well away from the engine.

 

[Badger_Boom]

They weren't Cibies, or Hella, though
KC Dayliters, with the smiley covers

still one up from Rally Giants.