Behind the scenes at the Ford garage

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The motor dealership of the 1950s was a gilded palace of delights. With a well-polished floor, carefully arranged pot plants and the smooth sales patter of a man with Bryclreemed hair and a pinstripe suit with a vibrant carnation in the buttonhole, who managed to strike precisely the balance between deference and insistence, how could anyone resist the allure of the mildly updated pre-war 10hp saloon sitting proudly in the centre of the showroom?

It is a finely honed art, that of the car dealer, wherein seduction plays at least as big a part as persuasion, and the front-of-house display accounts for a large part of its success. Around the back, of course, it could be a very different matter, but that was the side you never saw. Men in blackened overalls were engaged in hard labour all day, heaving engines out and taking them to pieces, with only the occasional pause for a sip of oily tea. It was really quite an impressive operation, and the slick salesman could never have managed without his oil-soaked army. We're not sure Mr. and Mrs. Perkins with their new semi-detached bungalow would have bought a Ford Anglia on the strength of it, however.

It is our privilege to give a little glimpse behind the scenes and preserve for posterity the work of the mechanics of the period. We see a Ford garage, apparently called Queens, in the 1950s, we don't know exactly where but the photographer was Albert J. Morris of Nelson, Lancashire, so it can't have been too far from there.

The main picture shows the engine coming out of either an E494A Anglia or a 103E Popular, and we do wonder why, considering that the car can't have been more than 10 years old at the time the photograph was taken. Hopefully there was nothing seriously wrong. It's interesting to see that the garage also worked on large commercial vehicles, too. That's a Ford Thames ET6 we see receiving some remedial work under the bonnet, a model which, like the E494A, was new for 1949.

They're fascinating snapshots from the past, but the work of mechanics and machinists is as important to us today as it ever was, so here's to the men and women who keep our cars going for us when we can't...

Words: Zack Stiling; photographs: Stiling Collection
 

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