Vauxhall welcomed its UK customers into 1961 with this advert; I’m it using to welcome all CC readers to 2014, and being in the UK, I can do it a little early.
I would suggest that the cars weren’t quite as big, compared with the motorway bridge, as this drawing may suggest though.
Happy New Year from a wet and cold UK.The PA Cresta has been a long time favourite of mine.
Happy New Year from NZ (also a day early !) : )
Well my first ever car was a 13 year old cool ‘sweetcream’ coloured ’59 PA Velox with the rear ‘D’ pillars as it were as a part of the rear screen assembly and flowing straight down from the rear roofline (looked amazing), and with the deeper ‘straight cut’ front hood over the grille. It was a very stylish car with lovely tall ‘oval dish-styled’ rear stop lights and with the indicators included within the rear fins. The engine was a six of 2262cc with an old fashioned oil bath air cleaner and single throat Zenith carb… lovely car !
In NZ back then brand new cars were very hard to obtain due to severe government imposed import licence restrictions. This meant lucky licence holders could sell their cars after a minimum of 2 years for much more than they had paid for them and make a nice profit ! So the cars were idolised as valuable investments and invariably maintained in ‘new’ condition for the 2 year resale to the queued-up plebs..lol : )
Never got a PA,the only ones I saw were rust buckets or expensive restorations but I did have 2 happy trouble free years with a 70 PC Cresta It took me a day to get used to a manual column shift and a very embarasing time when I couldn’t find the filler cap(behind the number plate).
My first car when I left school was a blue white PAX Velox I later had a 60 PAY great old cars and as mentioned above cars were extremely hard to buy back in the 60s in Aotearoa. Yep its the 2nd here today Happy new year to all.
How times have changed in NZ we now have rampant depreciation my sisters 2yr old Mazda6 sport 50k+ new is now valued at 12k used cars are so cheap its ridiculous and hard to fathom how things were only 20 odd years ago, PA series Vauxhalls however have risen in value the few that didnt rust away.
Hey… Mr. Carr’s post is … A Message From The Future. From Beyond the Motorway Age. As I type these words it is still the year 2013 in the Pacific Time Zone. I wonder what 2014 is like… Did he send us this message while flying around in the air with his Moller Skycar on autopilot? And since you Brits have obviously mastered time travel, can one of you get me one of those 1961 cars from the factory?
Thank you Roger, and Happy New Year to you too.. as well as to Paul, all CC contributors and readers, wishing the best in 2014!
Happy New Model Year everyone! On of the good things about the olden days was that people with dwarfism could always find work as artist models at Vauxhall’sl marketing department ….
Merry new year to all and here’s hoping you don’t have one of these following you home if you celebrate too much tonight, ’56 Ford my favorite year for them.
I’d have put a big yellow Checker at the top of the blog tonight. Never a bad idea to send people out on New Year’s Eve with taxis on their mind…
just did a 900km round trip on newyears day saw plenty of Police men about not many classics though except this rarity its on the cohort for perusal. Only 50 built RHD in 39
The new 57 Chevrobuicks are here!
Not only were they not that big, they weren’t that new either! But a gorgeous image that epitomises early 60’s optimism. Happy new year, all.
Hi Philip,
that is exactly why I picked it, plus the fact I missed being born in 1961 by about 30 mins!
Here’s to anothyeer year of great CC!
Just to be fair, here’s a police car from England or should I call them “rozzers” like Top Gear does. I was curious why they called them that so I looked it up on the interweb and it has two stories; one that a man named Robert Peel started patrols in Rossendale, Lancashire, and the rossen became rozzers. The other story is it from a French word for detective: “rousse”. Maybe Roger or someone else from the Emerald Isle can give us the scoop.
Named after Robert Peel,long out of date in the UK.Also Peelers in popular use in Victorian times,especially London
Hi tmt,
Thanks for the comments!
“Rozzers” is a London slang term for police, similar in tone to “cops”. Rozzer is probably a diminutive of Robert and would come from Robert Peel who founded the police service as we now know it. “Bobbie” is another with a similar origin, often as “Bobbies on the beat”, meaning an officer(s) on a regular foot patrol around a specified area or community, and is much more widely recognised.
Another term used is “Plod”, referring to the plodding, necessarily procedurally dominated processes of a police service and also linking to the solid, steady footfall of the uniformed and booted police officer.
The first force Peel organised was in London, so I’m not sure where the reference to Rossendale comes from.
A quick note to clarify – the Emerald Isle is usually taken as a reference to the island of Ireland, not the UK of England, Scotland and Wales.
Your welcome Rodger:
As being of English, Scottish and Irish heritage I kind of knew Ireland was the Emerald isle but my English side of me asked the Irish side if it was ok to use the term and he said it was ok seeing as how N. Ireland was in the Kingdom then the southern side of me took umbrage at that and then the two Irish sides started arguing amongst them self, well you know how the Irish are, always looking for a fight. So to keep harmony in the family I’ll refer to it as the British Isle’s from now on. Hope you know this is all with tongue firmly planted in cheek. And seeing as we’re all family here you can call me Lon.
Hi,
thanks for the feedback – I’ve got a bit of Irish in me somewhere…..
Hey, i remember out-cornering my mate at speed on the Wellesley Street off-ramp (virtually then a tight cambered 90 degree radius turn at 120kms give or take), he was on his 600cc Norton 99 and i was in my 997 Cooper. The little Mini did admittedly have extended welded steel rims. It was pre-hydrolastic of course and sitting on those rubber donuts that thing could corner faster than any motorbike of the era!!
After having owned 5 different English Fords and a Thames van back in the 60’s and ’70s I always wished I could have got my hands on a Mini or even a Vauxhall but I never saw a Mini in the metal till years later and have NEVER seen a Vauxhall.
Well, it isn’t the Rossendale story! Peel was Home Secretary (a bit like Homeland Security meets Dept of the Interior) and did create a police force in London, England in 1827 – the Metropolitan Police, still going strong and widely known as ‘the Met’; and police officers (or at least policemen) are still commonly called ‘Bobbies’ in Peel’s honour.
As the internet says, ‘rozzer’ is not widely used, and its use on top gear is almost certainly as contrived and staged as the rest of that show’s ‘spontaneous’ moments