RE: PH Blog: the death of the car brochure

[1974foggy]

My favourites as a kid were the ford, vauxhall and Austin Rover ones, I still have the odd one- they used to be superb. Highly airbrushed photos and detailed shots. Suppose there are far too many models and variations these days, the ford brochure would be enormous and there wouldnt be enough cheesy human models to add to the images!
I remember how hard the RS ones were to come by!

[Numeric]

What I also think is easily forgotten is how these brochures and photos shaped our later purchasing habits when we went from school child collector to purchaser.

So the premium brands that likely had a bit more to spend on brochures maybe were helped to get to or retain their position at the top of the purchasing tree possibly a decade after the brochure was collected by the child. Were Audi brochures special in the 80's when the premiumisation of Audi really kicked in? I certainly seem to remember a lot of pictures of Rally cars and the rally babe Michelle but that might be memory playing tricks??

I've seen a lot of brochures over the years - but the Porsche books always felt too special to bin, so maybe helps me to always think fondly of the brand?

[jimfoz]

Car brochures are one of my gilty secrets - I have a collection of about 1000 collected over 30 years. I have happy memories as a child of sending letters to manufacturers and receiving a glossy brochure about a week later. Unfortunately they usually sent the 'Car Show' 6 pager leaflets reserved for the masses of kids requesting brochures at Motorfair, but sometimes a full 'dead cert customer' brochure would land on my doormat. I was fortunate in that my dad owned a Mercedes and of course I thought that gave me carte blanche to pilfer brochures and price lists off the well-stocked stands when we went to Rivervale in Hove - as a bonus they also once had a Porsche consessionaire. I still have a pretty good collection of 1980's Mercedes and Porsche material. I note that nowadays dealers do not leave brochures out anymore and they seem to encourage you to download the brochure off the internet.

The best ones I found were always the Ford, Austin Rover and Vauxhall range magazines. The photography even made the crap models enticing. Metros and Fiestas were usually shown with a couple in tennis gear or a picniking family. Cavaliers and Cortinas were shown outside golf clubs with mustouchioed middle managers practising their swing - 'the GL model featured has optional chrome wheel trims, metallic paint and tinted glass'. The top of the range ones like the 3500 or Granada models were photoed outside a country house at night with characters dressed in black tie and ball gowns - a manacured finger pressing the button for the electric windows or caressing the draylon upholstery

[CampDavid]

The Crack Fox said:

LHD said:

I've kept a full brochure collection of every franchise i've ever worked at the time.

I've got Renault from 2002-2004

I bet the print has faded and the staples have fallen out

I bet the staples are a glorious soft fabric and the print is as pin sharp as the day it was collected, or was until last week, when page 5 set fire to itself for no good reason.