Star Cars 1971 album.
Just as collecting car-related cigarette cards was once a hugely popular pastime, so too was the collecting of stickers, and pictures to cut out and stick into appropriate albums. "Star Cars of 1971" was produced by D.C. Thomson and given away as a free gift to readers of The Victor comic. Within this slim album, some 70 cars are represented.
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However rather than there being cards glued in to the album, each illustration has been cut from a sheet of paper and glued in - their edges look quite wavy and suggest that a youngster was in control of the scissors at the time of cutting. Hunting around reveals that separate sheets of car illustrations were provided to collectors, perhaps over the course of several issues of The Victor, in order to complete the set. Sheet 3 for instance had eleven cars on it, to cut out and mount in the album.
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Two competition cars vying for the lead in a rally are represented on the cover, the lead car having echoes of Rover P6 about it (although a two-door), while behind it there appears to be a Mk1 Escort in hot pursuit.
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Inside, the cars are arranged alphabetically, beginning with the Abarth "Scorpion" and ending with the Wolseley 18/85 Mk.II, two more different road cars from 1971 you couldn't hope to find. Whereas the low-volume two-seat Abarth had a low-slung sporting body produced in Turin, hiding a 1,280cc engine and disc brakes, the Wolseley was a 4/5 seater saloon produced in the Midlands, with a transverse 1,798cc engine, based on the Austin/Morris 1800 range. Beneath each car is a snippet of information about it. The cars of 1971 incorporated in this album are as follows, some were extremely rare, whereas others such as the Avenger, BMC 1100/1300 variants, Cortinas and 140 Volvos for instance I remember being common sightings back in the 1970s.
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- Abarth Scorpion
- AC 428 fastback
- Alfa Romeo Montreal
- Aston Martin DBS V8
- Audi 100
- Austin Maxi 1750
- Austin-Healey Sprite Mk4
- Bentley "T" drophead
- BMW 2800CS
- Bristol 411
- Buick Centurion
- Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado
- Chevrolet Caprice
- Chrysler Imperial
- Citroen SM
- DAF 55
- Daihatsu 360
- Daimler Sovereign (XJ)
- Datsun 240Z
- Dodge Dart Swinger
- Ferrari 365 GTB4
- Fiat Dino Spider
- Ford Cortina GXL (Mk3)
- Ford Pinto
- Ghia Pantera (later De Tomaso)
- Gilbern Invader
- Ginetta G15
- Hillman Avenger GT
- Humber Sceptre
- Innocenti J5 (BMC 1100/ADO16)
- ISO Lele
- Jaguar E-Type
- Javelin AMX
- Jensen Interceptor II
- Lamborghini Miura P400S
- Lincoln-Mercury Comet
- Lotus Europa
- Marcos Mantis
- Maserati Ghibli
- Mazda R130
- Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5
- MG Midget MkIII
- Monteverdi 375S
- Morgan Plus 8
- Morris 1300 Traveller
- Moskvich 412
- NSU Ro80
- Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme
- Peugeot 504
- Plymouth Barracuda
- Pontiac Grand Prix
- Porsche 914/6
- Reliant Scimitar coupe
- Renault 12
- Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow
- Range Rover
- Rover 3500 (P6)
- Saab 99
- Seat 124 Sport (version of the Fiat 124)
- Simca 1501 GLS
- Skoda 110R
- Sunbeam Rapier H120
- Toyota Corona Mark II
- Triumph Toledo
- Vanden Plas 1300
- Vauxhall Viva SL
- Volkswagen 411LE
- Volga Gaz-24
- Volvo 144 Deluxe
- Wolseley 18/81 MkII
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Adding colour to the vehicles listed and illustrated in the book, are motor-related anecdotes, some of which are quite interesting/amusing...
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- "An American firm sold a device that warned motorists of police radar speed traps ahead. When this was beginning to sell well, they made another gadget which warned policemen that motorists had been warned about the speed trap"
- "A car was identified as stolen when police found a piece of a child's jigsaw puzzle hidden in a crevice. It proved to be the only piece missing from a puzzle belonging to the car owner's son"
- "A French gendarme was recently congratulated by a magistrate for bringing his 200th erring motorist to justice. When he left the courtroom, the gendarme found an angry crowd of motorists had set fire to his car"
- "Because the River Teme was washing away his farmland, John Williams of Knighton, Radnorshire, solved the problem - by car parking! He used 46 old crocks, thousands of tyres and loads of soil to form a wall that keeps the hungry river at bay" (are they still buried there?)
- "Jacques Lefiore and Marcel Foisel were fined for fighting a duel from their cars. The two Frenchmen drove past each other at top speed, leaning from the windows and trying to hit each other with broom handles"
- "Jim Greig, an AA patrolman in Lanarkshire spent several hours trying to repair a member's caravan axle. While Jim was busy, the member bought himself a new caravan locally and gave Jim his old one as a tip for all the patrolman's hard work!"
- "Don't be surprised if you see a car which looks as if its bodywork is covered by what seems to be floor carpeting! A new process "fires" coloured nylon fibres into pitch-like epoxy resin which has been spread over the sand-papered metalwork. These fibres are charged at 65,000 volts, making them tiny magnets, and they stick upright in the surface at 300,000 to the square inch. The finish is guaranteed for 2 years" (reminiscent of an advert I found years ago in a '70s copy of Hot Car, promoting the "Hairy look"!)
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Was this an annual publication, or one that came with The Victor on an infrequent basis, or just this one occasion in 1971 only?
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Return to the Motoring Collectables section to read about other items similar to this.
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