AUTUMN 1959 WINDWAY GARAGE, CARDIFF

What better way to cap off our Buying Issue than with a look back at some forecourts from a bygone era? We start in South Wales, with a fine selection of second-hand British classics

‘All that brightwork added some welcome sparkle during tough years’ AMERICAN-STYLE THERAPY

This impressively modernist car showroom is now the Royal Mail’s Cardiff West delivery office. In its day, it was one of a number of Windway Garages across South Wales. It must be nearly new in this photo, but while Windway acted as a dealer for Rover, Land-Rover, Morris and Aston Martin (amongst others) the majority of cars in shot seem to be second-hand.

Perhaps that would soon change, because 1959 was the year that purchase tax on new cars was cut from 60 per cent to 50 per cent, and restrictions on hire purchase were lifted. In 1960, output and sales for the British motor industry broke all previous records.

In the meantime, here we have a forecourt populated by rather curvy, chrome-laden machines that look distinctly out of touch with the modern, rectilinear architecture that looms above them.

From left, there’s a Morris Oxford Series III, a pair of E-series Vauxhalls – the first a two-tone TONY Cresta (possibly?), the second a Wyvern; both with the post-1955 TURNER front grille – a Ford Consul MkII, a glitzy Austin A105 Westminster, the Gerald Palmer-designed MG Magnette ZA and a Metropolitan peeping out of the window.

You may have noticed that all the cars in this row, with the exception of the MG Magnette, resemble miniature American sedans of the early Fifties – none more so than the Vauxhall E-series Wyverns. All that brightwork certainly added some welcome sparkle during tough years for the car industry.

Facing the other way are an Austin Sheerline (probably an A125), an SSJaguar 1.5-litre drophead coupé and a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 MkIIA.

Records tell us that the 1.5-litre SS Jaguar, FWB 60, was registered in Sheffield in 1938. This slightly battered example must have seemed pretty ancient when this photo was taken, and sadly there’s no listing for it on the DVLA database nowadays.

Upstairs to the left we can make out an Austin A40 or A50 Cambridge, a Consul MkI, an Austin Hereford, a two-tone Ford Zephyr Zodiac MkI (maybe an exciting convertible?) and then another A50 Cambridge, followed by another piece of Palmer’s work – the Jowett Javelin.

A Javelin might have been viewed by a car dealer in 1959 in a similar way to how the last Saabs would be seen today – a nice and interesting car, but one whose maker went bust some years earlier (Jowett ceased production in 1954) and one that they’d be quite glad to see the back of… no warranty offered.

Finally, there are two nice runabouts in the shape of a Ford Anglia 100E and a Morris Minor, either a Series II or a 1000.

None of these motors to your liking, sir? Well, we have a rubber dinghy, for the family on a budget…