This shot rather grabbed me. I was about the same age as the younger kid in the back of this Bond in 1955, and we didn’t have any car at the time in Innsbruck, so I suppose I would have been pretty chuffed to ride in the back of one of these. Or maybe not…I never did set foot inside one of the micocars at the time, as we had friends with real cars, like VWs, Fiat 1100, Ford Taunus, Lloyd, and such. Modest, but genuine cars. This looks like an amusement park ride…here Mom; your turn to drive!
The other shot of a Bond is just as odd:
Why would they choose to shoot it along with a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith?
Wonder – did the front wings detach like saddle bags for carrying brollys and biscuits?
It almost looks as if something is happening in the scale of the second photo – size wise the contrast would have been very significant.
It’s the Royal Family in an alternate universe. Phil and Liz Windsor, son Chuckie, and Chuckie’s friend from Austria.
Looks like this was the go-to family for Bond publicity photos — here’s a picture of them from the cover of a Bond sales brochure. In this one, he’s in the driver’s seat, while in the photo above, she’s driving:
Boy, is that picture overtouched. At what point do you sit back and say, “I think I’m done here, time to put away the paints and brushes.”
I did a bit of “analog” touching up back in the day before Photoshop, and my experience was that it was easy to go overboard. So often, they just started with a poor quality photo.
Post war Britain’s automotive equivalent of saying “we’re not worthy”. Full points for effort, but rubbish like all of ‘em.
I expect you could pick it up and carry it with you if you didn’t want to hunt up a parking spot.
I can’t imagine that this family was this happy to pose in this go cart. I suspect that an ice cream bribe was used.
My parents – working class Londoners – felt lucky to have a motorcycle and sidecar, so this would have been a step up from that!
Lots of people in the UK did not have cars way into the 60’s. We did not get a telephone until the early ’70s – and then it was a line shared with neighbors.
In the USA the standard of living was completely different to the UK in the post war era.
Brits had to decide whether to order an optional heater in their early ’60s cars whilst Americans were deciding on V8 vs. 6cyl, automatic vs. standard transmission, which radio, or whether to get air conditioning.
This BBC presentation makes the point extra-sharply. Car content starts at 16:34
Very true, Huey. We even had a cycle (not motorcycle) side car when I was a toddler. My Dad had two car brochures, one was for a Bond 875 (mid- late ’60s and fully enclosed by then!) and one for the ‘New Kind of Viva” (HC, so circa 1971). Living in London and a cycling enthusiast he never actually bothered to buy a car though he occasionally hired cars for family outings.
Have to wonder how much extra weight those empty front fenders added in the first pic. Poor little engine!
Bond really 197cc of Villiers up front was not enough for a decent motorcycle never mind such a passenger overload, some turned up in NZ obviously as a joke a used Ford 10 would go better and had a roof and windows.
A very few Bonds have popped up in the U.S.A., interesting but too slow and dangerous for me .
-Nate
My father bought one in 1956 because his girlfriend wouldn’t go on his motorbike. It did the trick. Girlfriend became wife and Bond was traded for an Austin A30. They are in their 90s now… the Bond was a nasty (very nasty by all accounts) interlude in a lifetime’s motoring history
My father used to tell me about how he and his friends used to ‘race’ them in the late ’50s.
They would, seemingly, tune the engines and go full speed down-hill on a dual-carriageway. He said that it would be off the speedometer at 75-80mph.
Health and safety hadn’t been invented then.
Since the Bond (Villiers) motor could be made to run backwards, it didn’t need a reverse gear. A three-wheeler without reverse could be taxed as a motorcycle, which made it much much cheaper to run than a car – and it could also be driven on a motorcycle licence.