In our current age of electrons and photons and lasers and shit, most of our car-related information is gotten online, via these computer machines. It wasn’t always like that, though! Once, you learned about cars from books and magazines, and, yes, brochures, glossy, exciting brochures you’d collect by the armful from car shows, or yank from the hands of reluctant salespeople at dealerships. Many were wonderful, and I’m lucky enough to have some good ones to share with you.
Most of my collection of brochures was sent to me by a friend in San Francisco who was cleaning out his garage. He’d accumulated these over many, many years, and you can tell that many of them had to be sought out with some difficulty, since a number are from obscure marques and brands that never even sold in America. Letters had to be written, requests made, palms greased, that kind of thing.
I was sent three heavy-arse boxes of these things, mostly ranging from the 1970s and 1980s, with plenty of American cars from the Big Three and the big AMC, lots of European makers including Peugot, Citroën, Bitter, Alfa Romeo, Rolls-Royce, and more. There’s 1980s Honda and Toyota and Datsun brochures, old Volvo ones, BMWs, Saab, Mazda, Mercedes, and on and on.
Periodically I’ll show some fun ones to you and we’ll ponder and explore them together, like we will when I trap you in this basement with me, one desperate day.
So, think of this as training! It’ll be fun!