A web log, an æthereal scrap-book if you will, with a somewhat vintage flavour. News items, occurrences, experiences, thoughts and opinions related to Victoriana through to Fifties Americana can all be found here.
Well, as I sit out in the dappled sunshine gracing my garden it seems I've just about kept my promise from the last post to come back in April (this being the last day)! That pesky thing called life conspired to get in the way again, although there were some pleasant interludes along the way - not least an enjoyable week away in Scotland (more perhaps on that another time). Anyway, here we are again and back to it with this latest article that has been languishing in my Drafts folder for the last four months(!).
The market for retro-inspired cars is a remarkably (but perhaps unsurprisingly) popular one - one only has to look at the success of Fiat's 500 range, BMW's MINI brand or Porsche's 911 (not to mention the wonderful anachronism that is Morgan) to see the draw nostalgia still has on the motoring public. However the desire for producing cars designed to look like machines from a previous age has been around for longer than most people might think, dating back at least as far as the early 1970s. In Britain companies such as Panther, NG and Dutton rode the wave of popularity that kit cars enjoyed throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s with their models resembling prewar Jaguar SS100s, postwar MGs and Caterhams respectively, all using easily obtainable and maintainable parts usually from Fords or Triumphs. More recently international manufacturers such as Japan's Mitsuoka, Germany's Wiesmann and Australian concerns Bufori and Devaux (among many others) have produced beautiful pre- and postwar-inspired vehicles (in Mitsuoka's case based on Nissan platforms; the others relying on bespoke designs) and even more "mainstream" companies like Bentley can't resist dipping into their back-catalogue for the super-rich vintagista.
Hurtan Albaycín T2 source - Wikimedia Commons/ Berthold Werner
However, until now I must admit I had never heard of Spanish-based business Hurtan - despite the fact that they have been producing vintage-styled sports cars since 1991. Their Albacyin range has, to this author's eyes, a very definite prewar BMW or Mercedes look about it and looks all the better for it (their forthcoming Grand Albaycín has an equally attractive '60s MG vibe, I'd say). Thanks to this news story I am now fully aware of this little Spanish sports car maker and its latest model - the Vintage. Based on the already retro-inspired Jeep Wrangler 4x4, the Vintage lives up to its name and goes for the full Thirties aesthetic - with mixed results, it has to be said.
One problem with attempting to graft older designs on to modern underpinnings is overcoming the differences between the base mechanicals and the bodystyle shape. In short vintage cars tend to be smaller than more modern ones, with the result that a vintage bodystyle, when placed over a modern chassis, can look somewhat stretched and misshapen. The track (width) can look too wide, the bonnet/grille can seem a little exaggerated and very often the wheels are (admittedly sometimes by necessity) modern reproductions that tend to be too small and fitted with wider tyres, which only helps to spoil the overall look.
While the Vintage does fall into this trap somewhat, as with so many "modern vintage" reproductions it is something that cannot be avoided and while to the trained eye its Jeep origins are still obvious the aesthetic remains pleasing enough to make me glad that Hurtan created it. Very much a niche market of one it is perhaps the answer to the question "what if off-roaders had existed in the 1930s?" and enjoys the advantage that all modern reproductions have of combining vintage aesthetics with modern comfort.
Even more pleasingly I have discovered in the writing of this post that a Hurtan Vintage is plying the streets of Madrid, Toledo and Segovia as a tourist bus, taking visitors around the sights and sounds of those historic cities in suitably old-fashioned and luxurious style. I congratulate Vintage City Tours on their business idea and choice of vehicle -something that could easily be adapted for other [capital] cities around Europe (and beyond) - and if I ever visit Spain I will be sure to seek both them and Hurtan out.
News from Bedfordshire now of the revival of a sports car company you've probably never heard of, which is a shame as Berkeley Cars had the potential to be one of the foremost lightweight sports car manufacturers to have emerged from the fashion for microcars as a result of the Suez oil crisis of the late 1950s, and could have been a real competitor to the likes of Lotus and Austin-Healey going into the 1960s.
Berkeley Cars began life as a between British automotive engineer and designer Lawrence "Lawrie" Bond, who is best known in the U.K. for the three-wheeled microcars that bore his name - the Bond Minicars of the '50s and early '60s, the Model 875 from the late '60s and the quirky Bug that was the company's last bizarre hurrah following its acquisition by rivals Reliant in the 1970s - and Charles Panter, owner of Berkeley Coachworks, then one of the largest manufacturers of caravans in Britain. Panter has been enjoying much success with the use of glass-reinforced fibre - otherwise known as fibreglass - in the construction of his caravans and was keen to employ it in sports cars, as a supplement the seasonal caravan market. His collaboration with Bond began in 1956 with the creation of the Berkeley Sports (officially designated the Type SA322, in reference to the engine capacity), a pretty little two-seat roadster that debuted at the London Motor Show in September of that year - 12 months before the similarly-conceived Lotus Elite.
A 1956 Berkeley SA322 Sports (with a Bond Minicar of similar vintage in the background. source - Wikipædia
As with all microcars of the period the Berkeley was powered by a motorcycle engine - in the case of the SA322 a two-cylinder, two-stroke, air-cooled British Anzani motor of 322cc that put out all of 15bhp. While this may sound laughably low for any car even of that time and especially for something purporting to be a sporty roadster, the benefit of the fibreglass used in the three-piece monocoque bodyshell (which did away with the need for a conventional chassis) meant that the Sports weighed in at an incredibly light 274kg - barely ¼ of a ton - with the result of impressive acceleration and a top speed of 70mph (which I'm sure would have felt substantially faster in a little thing like that!).
The Berkeley Sports was gradually refined over the course of the following three years mainly through the use of more powerful engines, from the 18hp 3-cylinder Excelsior found in the 1957 SE328 model to the heady 30hp version of the same motor that powered the Twosome and Foursome (SE492) of 1958 - the latter a stretched four-seat variant of the original Sports model. Top speeds rose progressively to over 80mph while fuel consumption still hovered around the 50-60mpg mark - a useful and welcome performance balance as fuel restrictions continued to bite. Berkeleys even enjoyed some achievements in international rallies, with Stirling Moss’s sister Pat racing a SE328 in the 1958 Liège-Brescia-Liège Rally. The brand proved popular in the U.S. export market too, with many examples finding their way across the Pond to America where the small British sportscar was also experiencing much success and where several still survive to this day as the accompanying video (top) shows.
March 1959 saw the biggest departure from the traditional Berkeley formula to date with the introduction of a new design - the B95 (above) and B105 - at the Geneva Motor Show. This was the first to use a series of four-stroke 2-cylinder engines again borrowed from a motorcycle manufacturer, this time Royal Enfield's 40bhp Super Meteor for the B95 and their 50bhp Constellation in the B105 (allowing the latter to exceed 100mph for the first time - both cars' names deriving from their official top speeds).
Later in 1959 Berkeley launched perhaps its quirkiest vehicle but one that so successfully tapped into the prevailing motoring conditions of the time that it became the marque's single most popular model (discounting the combined production of the various Sports versions) with over 1800 built - the quaint little three-wheeled T60. With the effects of the Suez Crisis still biting and with British motoring law classing any three-wheeled vehicle under a certain weight and engine size as a motorcycle & sidecar, the fact that cars like the T60 could be driven on a motorcycle licence and taxed more cheaply than its four-wheeled competitors made it the sports car of choice for the enthusiast on a budget. A year on and the T60 was joined by the T60/4 which, like the Foursome, was a stretched version with two occasional seats in the back
The sole surviving 1960 Berkeley Bandit source - Wikipædia
Unfortunately by the end of 1960 Berkeley Coachworks' fortunes were on the wane, the victim of a downturn in the caravan market that year (combined with the cars' complex engineering and the false perception of the two-stroke engines' unreliability - particularly in the States) which eventually saw the company cease manufacturing entirely and enter administration in December. Just before the axe fell Berkeley was working on its most mainstream project yet - the Bandit (above), a smart-looking 2-seat roadster that would have used the 1-litre four-cylinder Ford engine also found in the Anglia. Another advanced fibreglass design the Bandit also had the direct input of Ford's industrial might but this was not enough to save the company from liquidation and only two prototypes were produced (one of which still survives today) before the business collapsed. Attempts to sell Berkeley as a going concern to Bond Cars' owners Sharps' Commercials Ltd came to naught and although replicas and "continuation models" were produced by various different companies in both Britain and New Zealand into the 1990s the marque has languished in relative obscurity.
Until now, that is, with the welcome news that Berkeley Cars has returned to its original home base of Biggleswade in Bedfordshire amid plans to produce a limited number of handsome-looking new sports cars that look to pay homage to the original racy microcars of the '50s both in performance and design. The company appears to be aware of the limitations inherent in the niche sportscar market with its aim to make no more than sixty examples of the new Bandit and although £40-60k may sound a lot for a relatively unknown start-up it is about right for the market particularly given the advanced nature of the construction and powertrains. I'm especially interested to note the proposed use of plant-based substances in place of more common modern lightweight materials such as carbon-fibre, which should give the new Bandit a very competitive kerb weight and thus excellent performance. On that front there are more exciting-sounding forward-looking plans, with the suggestion of electric, fuel cell and even hydrogen power being offered alongside more conventional petrol options.
All in all it looks to be a very interesting proposal and one that I hope succeeds and then some. An advanced, lightweight roadster which uses modern, sustainable technology while still nodding to its past would be a welcome addition to the British sportscar ranks and I wish the new Berkeley Coachworks business well, with better fortunes than its innovative and inspirational predecessor.
This is another blog post I've been keeping back for a while with a view to publishing it when I would be incommunicado in hospital but with things on that front still uncertain and the subject in question of particular interest to the likes of us I feel that now is the time to share it with the rest of the vintage blogosphere.
The two articles featured in this post are equally gratifyingly in-depth studies of an area of our lives that we are all very familiar with - the vintage lifestyles that we all wholeheartedly embrace to one degree or another. I use the word "gratifyingly" as so very often pieces such as these incline at best towards the gently mocking and tend to make my blood boil with their inherent misunderstandings - often implying that we're all a bunch of rabid right-wing leaning Conservatives longing after the return of an imperialist yoke, of women "knowing their place" in the home, of a strict social order and a world that was generally far more hidebound than the one we live in today. It is for this reason that I rarely feature such critiques on here and why the one in the Guardian was an especially pleasant surprise to read, as in my experience they have a habit of scorning anything old-fashioned - with the traditional being an anathema to that particular organ, which is more often keen to try and point out - however tenuously - the negative aspects of the past (as in this recent, rather meandering and largely specious piece on men's suits in [spy] films).
Indeed this frequently pervading attitude that I'm sure we've all encountered - that we're wearing rose-tinted spectacles and desperately trying to live warts-and-all in a past that never truly existed - is something that I have blogged about a couple of times previously (once in 2010 and again in 2011); both of which obviously struck a chord with my readers judging by the number and type of comments I received. I don't intend to repeat everything I said in those posts here again as they remain as valid today as they were ten years ago, although in light of these two recent commentaries I do think it worth revisiting some of the overarching views I expressed at the time.
Both editorials (but the Guardian's in particular), whilst being largely positive about the subject, do touch upon the idea that by engaging in nostalgia and living a vintage lifestyle we are somehow embracing every aspect of our preferred era both good and bad. This is a view that for the life of me I have never been able to understand - a myopic, one-dimensional perspective that insults us by suggesting that we are unable to recognise the reprehensible aspects of our favoured time or are more than happy to include them in our lives. Within this is also the view that we should be grateful for all the changes - both social and technological - that have occurred in the modern age and that by supposedly turning our backs on the present we are somehow denigrating the achievements we have made in the last century or so. (Which we're not, as I've said before - many of us, myself included, just want to take the best of our chosen era and marry it to the best the 21st century has to offer.) This belief has always struck me as a something of a double standard - to accuse us of liking all aspects of a previous era while at the same time insisting that it is in some way unnatural of us not to look forward and embrace all that the present has to offer is in many ways just as deprecating to the memory of the past. I made the case in my 2011 post that in many respects we do appear to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater over the last fifty years or so - a view echoed by at least one of the Guardian interviewees and one that I still stand by. To use a further analogy, how is it seen as "weird" for those of us with a penchant for a certain era to dress in the fashions of that time - fashions that can be æsthetically pleasing, sustainable and sympathetic to all body types - yet perfectly acceptable for middle-aged, overweight men (for example) to wear the artificial, ill-fitting football strip of their favourite team? Where is the difference? Why is one seen as "normal" and the other not?
This attitude is also reflected in the somewhat negative terminology used by these commentators to describe us, both in the Guardian article and elsewhere. "Retromania[cs]" is a particularly derogatory phrase in my book, once again tacitly ascribing the characteristics of a mental illness to our choice of lifestyle. "Refuseniks" is another term that seems to be gaining currency, which continues to suggest that we are being actively obdurate and vehemently opposed to certain aspects of modern life. Here again we see the use of injurious language to describe a group whose perfectly harmless way of living is in some way incomprehensible to those keen to pass judgement. What's wrong with a more unbiased term like "vintagista" - or why not just use existing nonpartisan words such as "vintage enthusiast"?
From my own perspective I am reminded of an ethos that is very appropriate in respect of the above; one I have always striven to live by, given to me by a most unlikely of sources but which has always stood me in good stead and should really be the credo of all right-thinking people:
"While men are decent to me I try to be decent to them, regardless of race, colour, politics, creed or anything else. I've travelled a bit, and taking the world by and large, it's my experience that with a few exceptions there's nothing wrong with the people on it, if only they were left alone to live how they wanted to live." Biggles, from "Biggles Delivers The Goods", 1946
However I am pleased to see that - in line with my own encounters with fellow "living historians" - every single one of the interviewees in each column come across as intelligent, educated individuals who are as keen as we all are to put these misconceptions to bed. I was particularly pleased to see more than one respondent explain - as I did back in 2010 - that many of us like to take the best facets from both worlds and how there is nothing wrong with that.
Indeed let's focus more now on the positive bits of these two news items - and they are many - from the pleasure of a dozen vintage enthusiasts happily discussing their lifestyles and fashion choices to the interesting and in some cases insightful socially scientific theories expounded by the scholars. Although we may not entirely agree with all of the latter it is nevertheless thought-provoking to see them laid out in a largely unbiased fashion for a change and as hypotheses more than as accusations.
Then of course there is the pure enjoyment in seeing well-dressed individuals taking pride in their appearance and embracing the eras of their choice, one or more of which we can appreciate ourselves. Unsurprisingly what especially comes across is the feeling of camaraderie and community that the entire vintage movement fosters - the support, encouragement and almost familial sense of togetherness that often results when a group of like-minded people share a common interest and which is thrown into even starker relief in the face of some of the more negative remarks we have to put up with. It's good to see the benefits of modern technology also highlighted, particularly the positive aspects of social media which allow us to engage with other vintagistas maybe half a world away whom we might never actually meet - something that I have blogged about previously and which I'm sure we're all grateful for. The irony in this is of course that it pours further cold water on the idea that we are all technophobes who use nothing more advanced than a Bakelite telephone (well, sometimes we do I suppose!). And we haven't even touched upon the æsthetic and ecological properties of the clothing, accessories and furnishings that can be intrinsic to the vintage lifestyle, as mentioned in both papers.
To finish on that last point, as this is rapidly turning into another essay and I'm alive to the fact that it links to two other long-read stories, I will just add my own view to those espoused by several of the vintagistas on the subject of "mixing things up" and going for your own style over attempting a specific period-accurate look.
I consider myself to have been a vintage aficionado since my early twenties, so we're talking nearly 15 years now (yikes!), but my wardrobe actually contains precious few items that one would consider properly "vintage" (and in relation to clothing that is quite an elastic term, as we know - I mean some people are calling stuff from the 1990s "vintage" for goodness' sake! - but for the purposes of this discussion let's say anything that's over 50 years old, i.e. pre-1970). Taking that as a basis I in fact have only one piece of clothing that I can definitively date to within that period and that is my 1940s Kaufmann wool overcoat (above) gifted to me by an aunt a few years ago. I have a few jackets, such as a Harris Tweed job from Dunn & Co, that were picked up from vintage fairs over the years but of course that is no guarantee of age these days and I suspect they were probably made after my self-imposed 1970 cut-off.
The truth is most of my wardrobe is sourced from modern clothes shops - those found on the high street like Marks & Spencer and Debenhams as well as the various online emporia listed on the top left of this blog. I realise I am fortunate, as a chap, that men's fashion has in essence changed little over the decades (and certainly since my specific era of interest, the interwar years of the 1920s & '30s) so I am able to approximate the period look I crave to my satisfaction without having to resort to purely vintage garments. In other words, just like with so many vintagistas such as those in these articles, I mix and match modern - sometimes "vintage-style" - clothes with the few more valued retro items I own. As an example (and at the risk of frightening the horses), this more recent photo (right) has me sporting what is perhaps my favourite look - a 1930s chappist vibe that is achieved using only one truly "vintage" item. That is the jacket, which is a St Michael (M&S) job - an '80s-does-'30s type, I'd say - that I picked up in a charity shop in Canterbury a couple of years ago. Everything else is modern - the trilby from Village Hats, the bow tie from Tieroom, the shirt from Charles Tyrwhitt, the trousers from BHS (sadly missed) and the shoes (brown Oxfords, unseen) from Clarks. I hope this goes to show that one doesn't need deep pockets, nor have to spend hours trawling the likes of eBay (unless that's your sort of thing, of course, and I own it can be fun and rewarding sometimes), to get a look that will pass muster on the vintage scene. This particular outfit has garnered many a positive comment at various events, if I do say so myself (as well as admiring glances from little old ladies, much to my fiancée's chagrin!) and I hope this positive reaction is encouraging to anyone just starting out on the path to vintage enlightenment; you don't have to go all-out for vintage items straightaway - everything is attainable if you know where to look and how to put various items together. As the Auld Holyrood girls say - there are no rules and nothing wrong with throwing different things together to get a successful look as you work your way towards a fully vintage wardrobe, however long that might take.
The only difficulty in sourcing vintage-style clothing currently is the lamentable state of both high street clothes shops and some online stores - all of which are understandably struggling in these covid times but in the case of some like M&S and Debenhams are not helping themselves by making it unclear what market they're in, trying to go after the youth department in a misguided attempt to appear "relevant" only to alienate their existing [older] customer base and lose sales from both camps. Interestingly there was an article in the Daily Telegraphrecently that suggested M&S should reintroduce the St Michael label (defunct since the late '90s/ early 2000s ) in light of its popularity among the vintage set. It is sadly rare now that I find anything suitable from either of these stores. Unfortunately, as a result of covid hitting sales by encouraging people to work at home in their pyjamas (I mean why, for God's sake?! If only more people would realise the [mental] health benefits of dressing smartly, especially in the middle of a pandemic - something that has also been highlighted in both stories and which has previously been commented on here and elsewhere) we are also seeing the demise or decline of several once-great men's outfitters. Already T.M. Lewin have permanently closed all their physical stores and moved to online only, with Moss Bros. looking to follow suit (no pun intended!), while in America the likes of Brooks Brothers and Jos A. Bank have been teetering on the verge of bankruptcy for the last few months. This kind of thing doesn't bode well for the future of more traditional menswear but I'm still optimistic that there will remain a decent selection of gentlemen's outfitters where one can find the sort of vintage-style clothes that we can employ in achieving the look we desire - it's just that many more of them will be online-only (which brings with it its own set of difficulties - getting the right fit, for example - none of which cannot be overcome however).
That's enough to be going on with for the moment, though, I think. I'm not normally in the habit of doing that many massive posts but something about these articles has again clearly had an effect on me and I hope they have made an impression with you too. If you've made it this far - well done! - and I'd be delighted to read your comments, whether you agree or disagree with what I've written or not, and what you think of both commentaries.
To show that modern technology can work hand-in-hand with vintage, and, as in this case, perhaps even enhance it, comes this clever idea for classic cars that reintroduces a small, forgotten aspect of motoring - the tax disc.
Phased out in 2014 with the advent of automatic number-plate recognition and automated databases, the tax disc had existed for over 90 years as legal and tangible proof that car owners in the UK had paid their Road Fund Licence (or more properly Vehicle Excise Duty) for a period of 6 or 12 months. First introduced in January 1921 as part of the Roads Act 1920, the tax disc evolved over the decades to become ever more sophisticated to combat counterfeiting, but always contained the core information about the vehicle it was displayed on (on the nearside of the front windscreen, or in a special holder in the case of motorcycles) - namely the make and registration number, plus details of the amount paid, expiry date, issuing authority and later a barcode containing all such information and more.
Since their discontinuation in October 2014, following the introduction of a centralised online database, the windscreens of cars up and down the country have seemed all the barer for the loss of this little circular piece of paper (and the government's coffers upwards of £100m per year emptier with road tax evasion reportedly trebling as a result - proof again that maybe modern technology isn't always the best answer to everything and perhaps reason enough to reintroduce the humble tax disc to all cars again... Sorry, rant over.)
Nowhere is this loss more marked than in the classic car world, however, where the denuded windscreen looks even more out of place - so much so, in fact, that many classic car owners in my experience have kept back or otherwise recreated period tax discs so that they may display them correctly (and did you know that collecting tax discs is a recognised hobby with its own name - velology). Now a fellow motoring enthusiast has come up with a wizard idea that kills two birds with one stone, not only providing a suitably vintage-looking tax disc-like device to display in the time-honoured place but one that also incorporates modern technology in the form of the now-ubiquitous QR code (nowadays found on pretty much everything from clothes labels to bus stops, it seems) that allows the owner to upload information on the car to an online portal, which can be accessed by and downloaded to any interested party's smartphone. This can include everything from the car's history, restoration story, right down to whether the car is for sale or available to hire - with pictures, video, the works.
The claim is that this innovation will benefit classic car owners and fans alike by allowing the former to quickly and easily upload all the vehicle's details to one place, so keeping its provenance centralised, while giving the latter easier access to information on the car's history that might not otherwise be obviously available. Anything that inspires owners to display their pride and joy more regularly and in greater detail or encourages new generations to take an interest in the history of motor cars is to be applauded, although one hopes that this doesn't spell the end for the still welcome display board and badge bar, nor of interesting and enjoyable chats with the owner. Knowing classic car buffs as I do, however, I foresee this new app working in collaboration with the more traditional display elements and I certainly expect to see a few of these jolly nice-looking Car Facts Discs in evidence when I next visit a vintage car rally.
More news featuring items from Belgium, although "news" is perhaps not quite the le mot juste seeing as this article has been languishing in my Drafts for over a year. I had intended to start a new blog with it but then it occurred to me that I have enough of a job keeping this one going without adding a second one and besides which the idea featured in the article still fits the Eclectic Ephemera ethos, so here it is. Despite being more than a year old the subject matter is still current and interesting and follows on nicely from my previous Belgian-based Tintin post.
Indeed an antique Belgian telephone (like the Regent model, above) with Amazon Alexa built in is something I could just see Tintin using were he around today, although whether he could stretch to the eye-watering asking price is another matter (then again he might if he had Red Rackham's Treasure - get on with it Peter Jackson!! Ahem, sorry.)
In any event (and to return to the current subject) the re-purposing of vintage - and in this case, non-functional - equipment to include modern technology is something I consistently admire, not only as a means of giving a new lease of life to what would be an otherwise redundant item destined for the scrapheap but also for just the sheer incongruity of the latest tech being hidden within something supposedly obsolete.
I have featured similar ideas here before in the shape of the Tweephone - a rotary-dial telephone capable of sending Tweets - and the Twittertape, which went one better and used an antique tickertape machine hooked up to the internet to do the same thing. Now we have the Alexaphone, a genius idea out of Los Angeles which sees antique telephones being converted to run Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant technology, such as is more commonly found in that company's Echo speakers.
As with most modern technology virtual assistance AI is largely a closed book to me and something I intend to keep that way, as the idea of artificial intelligence in general is not something I am especially keen on. Nor am particularly enamoured with the glut of so-called "smart" technology now available - not only do we have the likes of Google Assistant, Windows Cortana and the aforementioned Amazon Alexa but also smartphones, smart TVs, smart meters and now even flippin' video doorbells all of which are recording your every word and movement! Where it will all end I wouldn't like to say, but the whole business doesn't seem very "smart" at all (except for the companies that are harvesting the resultant data) and is something I will vehemently oppose for as long as possible.
It is for this reason as well that I like the idea of these devices, for one particular aspect of their original design, the telephone hook, thwarts one of the virtual assistant's most invidious foibles - the fact that it is always "on" and therefore listening to everything that's going on around it. Not so with the Alexaphone, which is only on when you lift the receiver! No fear of some faceless, polo-necked eye-tea wallah in a metal and glass office somewhere in California transcribing what you had for breakfast this morning. Instead just lift the receiver, ask your question and Alexa will respond - then just thank it and hang up. Brilliant!
Whether this marriage of vintage and modern technology is worth upwards of $1500 I'll leave you to decide but - practical or not, art or no - it is nevertheless a splendid idea and one I am glad to see realised.
Those who are fortunate enough to have their own gardens have rightly been taking advantage of this to get outside - especially in the lovely Spring weather we're experiencing this Easter - and do a bit of horticultural pottering, but I bet this chap in West Yorkshire wasn't expecting to discover a car when he went to dig his garden!
That though was the surprising find as reported in this article - a 1950s Ford Popular that had somehow wound up completely buried in a suburban back garden. Quite how or why it got there is anyone's guess, although the military vehicle theory is as good as any. Ford Pops would have likely been used as basic runabouts by the postwar armed forces - perhaps this one went AWOL and was hidden away to be retrieved later. Such incidents are surprisingly commonplace with pre-war cars whose owners - fearing their potential destruction in bombing raids during WW2 - buried them in their gardens to be retrieved after the hostilities were over only for them to be forgotten until unearthed decades later, but this is a rarer instance of a post-WW2 car being found in such a way. This is assuming it is a Ford Popular, which I have no reason to doubt, although it would be something if it were to found to be an older vehicle.
Either way it is an amazing (and amusing) find and definitely brightened up my day when I first read about it, hence its inclusion here. If nothing else it ought to encourage the green-fingered amongst you to get out in to your garden, if you have one, and start digging. If it sounds too much like hard work you don't even have to rip up your lawn to uncover fascinating treasures, as this similar story from Stoke-on-Trent proves:
It always astounds me to think how these historical artefacts can just resurface (quite literally) after centuries underground, as the movement and cultivation of the earth slowly brings them back to ground level again, to be rediscovered in the sometimes most bizarre of circumstances. It gives one to wonder just what other treasures are still waiting to be uncovered - perhaps in your own back garden!
A 19th(?) century clay pipe that was dug up in the family back garden in the '90s by our pet dog Toby(!).
What's the strangest thing you've unearthed in your garden? Let me know in the comments and if you haven't found anything yet - get your spades on!
You may remember within my Easter post last month the tempter of a comment I made about an upcoming "exciting project" that I had been working on. Well, I'm delighted to be in a position now to reveal all!
Yes, I am now a contributor to a wonderful new vintage magazine(!!) called:
Co-created by Mat from Tales of a Southern Retro, In Retrospect quite rightly describes itself as "a modern magazine for old-fashioned people" and is chock-full of fascinating articles written by some of the best, most well-known vintage bloggers in Britain (and me!)including Missy Vintage, Norton Of Morton, Old Fashioned Susie and The Forties Floozy. I think you'll agree that it's a very welcome and well-presented addition to the vintage scene and I'm thrilled beyond words to be a part of it.
Currently In Retrospect is available online only (and only free until tomorrow so hurry if you want to get a look at it for nowt! - apologies for the short notice but I've been away for most of the weekend) but with any luck the next issue will be on a shelf in a (British, sorry again international readers!) newsagent near you before too long.
Until then, pop over to the site, have a look round (do please spread the word too) and let me know what you think!
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