Ever Ready Motormate
Cast your mind back to the late 1960s and the basics of everyday driving. Read any period road test of an affordable car and you’ll feel glad you’re a ‘pampered’ driver of 2017.
So much of what we take for granted today was deemed exceptional then. Essentials like rear window demisters, two-speed wipers, head restraints and reclining seats are treated almost as luxuries for which customers should feel grateful. Many cars had none of these as standard, and some still lacked even a heater.
If your car conked out on a dark, wet country road, for example, then you were at serious risk of a lorry driver, having downed his nightly four pints at the Red Lion, ploughing straight into you. If you had a light-reflecting warning triangle in the boot then it was only down to a foresighted visit to Halfords.
Into this world of gloom and risk stepped the canny Ever Ready with its Motormate combined lantern/warning beacon. ‘Tough, Versatile, Powerful’ it said on the box, and the hefty six-volt battery inside meant you could sit the thing on the car roof and its red light would flash vividly to show your presence and, hopefully, bring rescuers. Today, our cars have hazard-warning lights built in. In 1968, such a feature was almost unheard-of.
The original Motormate is one unsightly device, though. In a sleek, rounded world, it appears woefully crude and breakable. Its plastic feels brittle, its metal handle and lamp bracket are cheap and rust-prone, and the wires for its swivelling torchlight are exposed.
However, it’s a proper period piece for a 1965-75 classic along with a tartan car rug and a square AA Relay radiator badge. If it’s just too pug-ugly for you there’s also the Motormate II, an authentically 1970s item in rounded orange plastic with an orange (rather than red) beacon.
They were products of the now-defunct Ever Ready, designed to use the company’s own batteries, as were the cycle lights we all had on our bikes as kids. When the Motormate was current, the Ever Ready company held 80% of Britain’s portable battery market, making 3million daily. Yet it ignored the challenge from Duracell and its alkaline equivalents that made 1970s portable cassette players work for more than 20 minutes. Ever Ready went into slow decline thereafter.
Undamaged, working Motormates are hard to find. If you do, upgrading the bulbs to LEDs works wonders.