This short but fascinating film shows a classic and vintage car display which took place on a summer day in the UK during 1962.
The film is from a longer, 5 inch reel of standard 8 film which also features some footage from Stratford-on-avon, which I'll publish in a future post, and is labelled, 'Stratford-on-avon 14-5-1962'.
I don't know if the vintage car display occurred on the same date and at the same location and I couldn't find any information about anything of that nature occurring in May 1962 so the precise location is a bit of a mystery.
This particular clip is only about 1 1/2 minutes long; although it has an interesting assortment of vintage cars, I can't help wishing the photographer had been able to keep their camera running for a few minutes longer on the spring day in mid May 1962.
Vintage car display film
The actual film shows a number of different Vintage Cars and with a bit of google research I've be able to identify some of them. At the start of the film is a car with the registration U 44 and this is a 1904 Rolls Royce 10HP number 20154. This went for auction in 2007 and although I didn't find the final price if fetched, in the auction site linked to above they were asking for offers of $2 million. I wonder what it was worth when this film was shot?
The other car which I could find some information on had the registration AX148, and this was a slightly newer Rolls Royce 10HP which was made in 1905. I think the thing which struck me during the first appearance of this car in the film was the two school boys with matching caps who were in the crowd looking at the car - how often would you find school boys wearing caps in 2020?
It's interesting to see these cars not just displayed statically in a show, but actually being driven by their owners. I guess at the time these cars, although vintage, were only about 60 years old - not actually at the official definition of an antique. In fact, some other cars in the show, which look as if they were made in the 1920s or 1930s could even at the time have been classified as simply, 'old cars' rather than 'vintage cars'.
For anyone interested in more information about the various cars shown in the film, this classic car site has a great deal of information about the registration year and area the car was registered in etc.
If any viewer of the film is a classic car enthusiast, I'd love to know what some of the other models are which I've been unable to locate.
[…] find it interesting that I’ve only just published a film which featured vintage cars, and almost straight away there is another film. It tends to cement my though that because cine […]