Continental grand touring in a classic Bond car

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Last year, we saw a Bond Minicar being loaded with spare parts and accessories by what appeared to be a lady owner, and couldn’t resist writing a bit more about the Minicar, for which Stirling Moss was full of praise on account of its comfort, pulling power, liveliness and roominess… apparently.

Well, this here is a slightly later variant of the Minicar and we don’t know if it’s a genuine picture taken at the side of the road at a resting place or petrol station with three people going on a jolly or a publicity picture. The setting is perhaps too good for it not to be staged. The fact is that these three seem to be making the best of it and seem not to be affected by space constraints, either.

Also of interest is the Silver City travel bag, which would indicate the little Bond and its occupants are on their way to Lydd Airport, where Silver City Airways famously operated the air ferry from Britain to Le Touquet in France for all those Brits wanting to enjoy a touring holiday around continental Europe. There are thousands of pictures of holidaymakers driving their pride and joy into the open clamshell doors in the nose of a Bristol Freighter or Superfreighter plane. The flight took around 20 minutes. The cost, depending on the vehicle’s size, varied between £18 and £27. At its peak, the air ferry carried 90,000 vehicles and 220,000 passengers across the Channel. That was in 1960, but two years later the company closed its doors: it had been unprofitable despite its popularity.

With its wide arches, this Minicar is an early 1960s model so the picture must date back to Silver City’s heyday, when touring abroad was considered rather dashing. Airfreighting your car to France was perhaps the non plus ultra in the whole exercise, a privilege certainly not for everyone. We doubt many Minicar owners were acquainted with the luxuries of continental touring so, yes, we’d say this is a publicity shot.

Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: source unknown
 

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