Vintage rides

Whenever you see vehicles in period films and tv shows they look unreal. That's because the art department called up a vehicle collection and said "this film is set in 1956" and were supplied with a dozen '55 and '56 motors shining like new pins.

Who after all is going to keep a collection of dented faded cars? In fact they're unlikely to keep a collection of worthy but dull average cars... as the Ford Escort 1.3 Popular becomes an ever more rare sight on our streets nobody is tucking away a couple of prime examples complete with a little wheelarch rust and an Exeter University sticker in the rear window ready to decorate the set of an eighties film, and yet they used to litter the place. When was the last time you saw a Vauxhall Viva?

So every scene set in fifties New York features serried ranks of gleaming Cadillacs and Hudson Hornets, when anybody who has visited that fair city knows that only Paris has more dented vehicles on display at any given time.

And as it is with cars so it is with every other aspect of film and tv, they only show you the antiseptic scrubbed clean facade rather than the gloriously grubby reality. Which is why this collection of pictures is a wonderful peek into the real past in all its unvarnished glory. Even the ones without cars in are great.