shot by Simon White
It’s a Ford Popular 103E, made in the UK from 1953 to 1962, and was Great Britain’s cheapest car when it was launched. Crude, simple, cheap, it was really just an updated Ford Model Y, which dated back to 1932. It had a 30 hp flathead 1172 cc four and a three speed transmission. No heater, one wiper, everything spartan and basic, to provide the lowest cost motoring possible to cash-strapped British workers who were building Jaguars and MGs to sell in the US.
It became the hot rod of choice in later years, for obvious reasons.
And yes, its grille is remarkably similar to the 1936 BMW 328.
This would have seemed very outdated by 1962 – the Mini had been on sale for 3 years by then! I suppose it sold on its price and its simplicity though.
Dave it’s was out dated in 53!. Cheap wheels for a car starved nation just coming out of war time rationing. Cheap outdated cars wasn’t a Eastern Block invention.
1959 was the last year. They went to a 100E-based Popular when the 105E (“Harry Potter”) Anglia came out
It was sort of like the Chevette in the U.S.
Much, much more primitive. The bodyshell and all the mechanicals were a direct continuation from 1937, with a slight alteration to grille, dash, and badges. At least the Chevette wasn’t a 1955 car rebadged. Although a new ’55 Chevy in ’75 – the hot rod guys would’ve lined up to buy it!
The headline photo is actually a Ford Anglia, the 1949-53 facelift model. Pre-facelift it featured a grill similar to the ’32 Model B , but after the war it was open season on BMW design.
When the 100E Anglia arrived, the old model was stripped of unnecessary luxuries like twin bottom hinged wipers and decent-sized headlamps, but given the larger 1172 motor.
These cars featured brake-by-wire of course – stout steel wire – but they had far more powerful brakes than the old 1930s Y-Type.
For 1958 they really should’ve given it a facelift by cutting away the grille split and giving it an “impact ring” grille along the lines of the new Edsel. at least keep the resemblance in the Ford family.
In Australia, these mean and skinny miseries were better known as the Ford Widely Disliked, and had a deserved reputation for being able to fall over even when parked.
Fitting the BMW grill helped it not, as it then just became known as the Blocked My Way, which, when fallen – or even upright and flat out – it did.
Fortunately they didn’t seem to last long in Aussie conditions. The postwar four door Prefects with the lights in the fenders were much more common, though mechanically no better. Or the later ‘mini-’49-Ford’ Prefects and Anglias. Seeing one of these was a real rarity in the sixties.
Maybe nobody bought them? That’d seem about right. Unlike fifties Britain, we had a much wider range of cars to choose from.
Oddly enough, my late aunt owned a convertible one for a while in about ’63, something I know only from a photo.
I think in one of the recent “dealership photos” posts, one of the dealers had signage for “English Ford”. Were these sold in the States? I can’t imagine it happened in appreciable numbers!
They were sold in the US as an Anglia until being replaced by the more modern 100E in ’53-54.
The “English Ford Line” branding was dropped sometime in the mid/late ’60s although the Cortina was sold in America through the end of the MkII series. Ford offered at least one European import in America continuously from 1948-1980.
I remember when these cars and pre-Cortina successors were commonly known as “English Fords” here in the US. Though the vans and panels were invariably called Thames, rhyming with games, not gems. I didn’t know these stayed in production after the 100E was introduced; kind of the Malibu Classic of its time I guess.
Ford Thames vans here in the UK were pronounced ‘temms’, and definitely not ‘taymes’
I’ve always assumed that was because Ford’s Dagenham factory was on the River Thames.
My dad lived in London for many years and basically spoke British English, so I learned how to pronounce it before I could spell it. My point was that most Americans, even a guy I know who owns a Thames van, pronounced it phonetically out over ignorance.
From the ferocious rust some English Fords could develop, Bernard, it might also be assumed the Dagenham factory was IN the Thames.
I saw one of these near K-State in 1958. I doubt that they were ever sold here; most likely brought stateside by a Fort Riley soldier. Most Army activity at that time was in occupied Europe, and the soldiers brought back a lot of weird Euro cars as souvenirs.
The only car my Dad ever owned. Well, half of one anyway, with his brother. Here it is on the Isle of Wight (I think) with my Mother to be circa 1955/56. I don’t remember the car at all, though. It was replaced with a cycle (not motorcyle) sidecar.
That’s quite curious, as the Pop was surely aimed at getting folk off their bikes and into a car (which might also explain the extremely spartan finish, all of which was lux compared to a bike).
Mind, he probably pedalled to 40mph quicker than the Ford ever could….
My dad actually owned a ’48 Anglia, known in the family as the “English Ford”. Details that I know are sketchy. He said he paid something like $800 for it around 1949, as a second car, after getting out of the Army after WWII and getting married in Oklahoma City and working construction. It wasn’t from a new car dealer, but it had never been titled before. They kept the thing till about 1955 or ’56, through his joining the reserves, getting called up into the Air Force during Korea, being stationed in Texas, buying a couple of farms and finally finishing college in Arkansas on the G.I. bill. I missed it by a few years, being born in ’58. I did hear the engine was overhauled by a technical school before it was sold for a cost of something like $30. That big trunk folded down flat like a tailgate. I heard that a four-drawer chest that used to be in my bedroom was hauled home strapped to that trunk lid (how people made do before everybody had to have a truck to get through life). All in all, I never heard too much bad about it (unlike the ’57 Dodge wagon that was the family conveyance when I was born). Dad didn’t buy another foreign car until he bought my sister a used Beetle for college in the early ’70’s and didn’t buy one for himself until picking up a used Corona in ’74 or so during the oil crisis, so this was quite the outlier.
I was fascinated when I was old enough to buy Hot Rod Magazine in the late ’60’s and saw all the Anglia gassers ripping up the drag strips. I thought I had really missed something not ever riding in the English Ford.
My very first car I totalled it dueta rollover though it actually feon its side and into a tree roof first that was the end of it, I solit back to the wrecking yard I got it frand swore never to buy another one gutless in the extreme they were somewhat lighter ans I guess faster than the four model Prefect that had the same powertrain the brakes were myth mine never actually worked on more than two wheels.
CC Effect, I saw one of these parked beside a gas station / garage a few weeks ago. Of course it was modified as they all were, I’ve never seen a stock one.
They were exported to Canada, so probably some made their way to the US that way.
The best thing about these cars was the range of goodies available new or s/hand.
Panhard rod for the rear axle/ split beam swing axles for the front/aluminium cylinder heads/ superchargers/overhead inlet valve conversions. The sky was the limit, and it was affordable.