Sometimes I’ll pick images for Cold Start from these vintage car brochures because the car is interesting, or there’s an interesting if tangential story, or I’ll just use it as a thinly-veiled pretext to talk about one of my own weird-ass agendas or fetishes. Today, though, my choices and motivations are much simpler: look at these bonkers photos! That’s it! These are pictures from a 1959 Lloyd Alexander brochure and, well, just look at them.
That kid up there! Lounging languidly in the lavish luxury of a Lloyd! Those clothes, the panda, that look, it’s all just, well, so much. Let’s look at another picture from the brochure:
Bam! Hey! Look who’s here, fixing you with an icy blue stare! It’s Houndstooth Hattie, the woman who fucking knows how to rock a suicide door.
Oh, Lloyd, you crazy diamond! You know, Lloyds were a bit more technically interesting than you might expect; they were ahead of their time in that the air-cooled inline twin engines they used were mounted transversely and drove the front wheels, like what became wildly popular a solid three to four decades later.
Back in the mid-’50s, these guys were the number three brand in Germany, after Volkswagen and Opel! And they sold these in America, even!
Just ask that kid up there.
I cant get over how they made the kid’s teeth yellow but the panda has pure white.Truth in advertising?
OMG have you seen the Lloyd Alexander wagon!
And the Lane Museum has an LT600 VAN!
Y’now Herbert? From Family Guy? The picture of the kid looks like something from one of his wet dreams. (Yeah – ewwww.)
Enjoy your sleep son, I promise not to crash.
This was the golden age of the pharmaceutical industry collaborating with the psychology profession in support of the military industrial complex’s research into mind control..
What most people don’t know is that kid’s name is Alexander Lloyd.
The kid picture is a dramatization of the last instant for humanity as the sun goes kablooie.
I think you can fit more stuffed animals in the backseat. What if we measured its capacity with Puffalumps? I HAVE MORE NOW.
Has there been a Cold Start or separate article on child seats over the years? Namely thinking of the Ford Tot-Guard that they highlighted in the features or safety sections in brochures well into the late 80s. It looks…claustrophobic.
In my day child safety was dad’s arm slammed into your chest
God’s honest truth, I thought the fold-down armrest in the front seat of my grandma’s ‘75 Riviera was a booster seat. Probably because that’s where she let me sit as we cruised down the road.
‘The Hitcher’ starring Dennis the Menace will return after these commercial messages.
In the unlikely chance I become famous enough to require an alias for hotel reservations, it’ll be “Lloyd Alexander.”
Traveling with Ford Prefect, if I’m guessing.
We’re in a band, the Quasi-Obscure Postwar European Cars.
And then you get a hotel clerk who says “I loved the Chronicles of Prydain! But didn’t you die in 2007?”
Go Fuck Yourself
I think that’s how they make that sweet coin
Introducing the kid launcher. Want your kid to fly towards the front? Have them lay down and hit the brakes hard.
That thump means it is working.
There’s an often-reposted-to-/r/VintageAds mid-’50s Nash ad that shows a kid lounging on the passenger side of the car’s famous folding seats while Mom’s sitting in back with her feet up on the reclined passenger-side front seats and Dad’s driving. My stock joke for it is that at least the kid’ll slam into the dash feet-first and it’ll keep him outa ‘Nam.
You know what we don’t get enough of in car ads these days – the ‘ol look straight-to-camera. Hey buddy! You like cars? What’s it gonna take to get you into a Lloyd Alexander today? Honestly, when I saw the illustration of the engine, my first thought was: “why is there a picture of a weird Futurama robot leaning back on a sofa and winking at me?”
Based on scale, I think Houndstooth Hattie is about 4’10” of haughty hotness.
Who probably didn’t want to wear slacks in the photo.
Straight Outta The Village of the Damned
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054443/
“Beware the stare that will paralyze the will of the world.”
Or that little monster on Twilight Zone who could bring down airplanes….
Kid reminds me of the low-rent Mason Reese lookalike from the St. Jude Children’s Hospital commercial.
And now I have that Kars for Kids jungle playing in my head.
Thanks.
Kodachrome, baby! Or- since this is a German car – most likely Agfacolor Neu.
And now I have Paul Simon stuck in my head.
I knew that he was small, but not that small!
Am I the only one who thinks suicide doors make more sense?
(Keep talking like that and you’ll be referred for counseling.)
Front suicide doors are the best kind of suicide doors.
As someone with a Panhard Dyna Z with front suicide doors I do find such doors to be indubitably cool but a challenge for people with mobility issues and also a challenge for people to maintain modesty while wearing skirts & dresses when getting in and out ( it was likely for more than reasons of fashion that that model is wearing such snazzy checkered pants in that picture.)
Everything about that kid makes me think there’s a guy just out of frame screaming “BE. STILL!!!” in German.
YOU! YES YOU! BE STILL, LADDIE!
IF YOU DON’T EAT YER MEAT, HOW CAN YE HAVE ANY PUDDING? HOW CAN YE HAVE ANY PUDDING IF YE DONT EAT YER MEAT?!?
Bleib sitzen for those who were wondering.
“Kid, you gotta smile better than that. I’ve got a shoot with Houndstooth Hattie and her sister Shear-sided Sarah in an hour and I am NOT missing it! Gimme your A game!”
In the real world, all that stuff in the map pocket would fall to the ground and scatter in all directions, including one piece that would catch a small breeze and land under the car at the exact center coordinate, a quarter inch beyond the reach of the longest human arm.
That is just how a small non-VW german cars looked at that time.
The first NSU Prinz and the (east german) Trabant looked very similar.
The photo colorization is a bit heavy though..
Would it be inappropriate to say the kid fucks?
I hope not, because that kid fuuuucks.
Since the kid has likely aged since 1959, it’s only moderately creepy.
That’s not a kid. That is an ageless being who has knowledge no human can fathom. Time holds no meaning to him. He exists, and he fuuuuuucks.
All I’m saying is that if you swap the stuffy for a tumbler of scotch and put a cigarette in his off hand you basically get Hugh Hefner in a kid’s body.
It’s a picture of a kid. Yes it’s inappropriate.
That kid certainly slaps.
He does appear to be popping a pretty considerable tent.
That kid is creepy AF. But at least he caught ol’ Torchy’s eye, and i got to see a delightful little car i hadn’t seen before.