Following on from Tomorrow’s World, Look At Life - Living with cars 1964 looks at the future of motoring... Made 7 years before I was born, and so maybe 10 years before I noticed such things it’s no surprise I don’t recognise many of the cars. The proposed solutions for a forecast 40 million cars didn’t all work out / materialise either....
youtu.be/VhSXNr4_hUA
Also, when did green attract the reputation of being bad luck? Loads of cars seemed to be shades of green in the ‘60s!!
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Interesting. Liverpool is mentioned, it actually isn't a bad city to drive in (apart from the hideously expensive parking) We can get there within the hour from here quite easily. Better than Manchester ..
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The port of Liverpool gets a mention in this 1963 one on transport infrastructure.
youtu.be/IgOxglry8Dw
What’s also amazing to me is the quality of the picture; I’m mirroring it from my iPad to the TV and both the picture and the colours ar incredibly crisp. I wonder what format it was originally shot in? And then uploaded to YouTube?
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It's interesting that it all looks so realistic - it makes one realise how false any recreation of a 60s street scene is. I've often wondered why classic vehicles don't look quite right in period dramas - Morse, Midsomer murders, etc - and I think it is because they are too perfect. In practice, a random street scene in 1964 would have vehicles in all conditions and state of cleanliness. The coal lorry will be grimed with coal dust, as will the driver, the wooden drop-sides will be worn, one of the tail lights will be broken, etc.
Also, crucially, a genuine 1964 scene would have plenty of older vehicles. Pre-war ones were pretty common. I looked at and considered several when I was buying my first car in 1966, and these were in everyday use. In the end I chose a 1954 Triumph Mayflower because it was in good working order but mainly, cheap at £10.
I could step straight back into that footage and it would all seem absolutely normal.
But then I grew up with cars older than those. I remember when no more than about four noticing the distinctive exhaust noise of a Ford Popular or a Morris Minor, and I remember the factory protective plastic on the seats of a new Standard Vanguard Phase III, the column gear change, and my uncle taking it up to an indicated 100 mph on the A1. People up the road used a 1920s big Morris saloon as their ordinary car, and I noticed the distinctive noise of it's straight-cut gears even as a child.
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Fun to watch both films. I was 6 in '64 so can just about remember life like that. Certainly remember the Forth Road Bridge being built and opened. Prior to that we used to get on a little car ferry to cross the Forth.
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Yes very nostalgic. These were all originally shot in 35mm hence the high image quality.
Runfer, I too remember the Forth Road Bridge going up. We regularly took Sunday trips to a vantage point near South Queensferry where you could park and see the progress.
Both films have actually stood the test of time pretty well. They overestimated future car numbers a bit but most of their predictions haven't proved too outlandish. No flying cars for example.
What does strike me is the gung ho approach to knocking our cities about in the name of progress......and the lack of Health and Safety. Does a flat cap and a fag count as protective gear?
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I was interested to see the monument to Edith Cavell in the middle of a three-way junction outside Norwich cathedral. Contrary to what the film shows, I remember it as the site of frequent traffic jams. It was moved at some point and I believe it is inside the cathedral now.
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The image quality really is remarkable, even blown up to 55†on a TV
Most of the predictions did seem to be there or thereabouts though, which is pretty impressive! I wonder why the auto stacking car park never caught on in the UK; they are very widespread in the many large cities in the Far East. And contrast the fuss and time taken over HS2 (ignoring whether that’s a sensible use of money or not...) to the way the M1 and M6 appear to have been built based on that film. Though perhaps there was as much noise but it wasn’t featured on the film?
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I am a child of that era, I was 8 about the time that was filmed, its all familiar to me - at that age stuff makes an impression, The first views of the elevated M4, the furore over the inner box and the west way, stuff like that.
Mind you, in my memory its not that long ago that the M3 ended at a set of lights and a t-junction outside Winchester, I remember driving over sections of the unjoined up m25 because it was new, fast AND EMPTY!!!!!
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>> Mind you, in my memory its not that long ago that the M3 ended at
>> a set of lights and a t-junction outside Winchester, I remember driving over sections of
>> the unjoined up m25 because it was new, fast AND EMPTY!!!!!
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It’s isnt is it...my first job was in Southampton, and with parents in Yorkshire or London, I remember the traffic lights at the end of the M3, so that *can’t* have been that long ago ;)
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>> It’s isnt is it...
91 I think.
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 7 Nov 18 at 02:30
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>> 91 I think.
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I started work in ‘92, so I reckon it might have been a couple of years later than that? At least, when it all joined together.
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I lived there long before that and there was never a T-Junction in my time Z. It stopped being the M3 just at an annoying little country dual carriageway through Twyford down and a crossroads - Hockley lights.
As for when it became joined up, well I know they started bulldozing in 92, I think it was finally finished in 96, but I had left the UK long before that so can't be exactly sure.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 6 Nov 18 at 18:27
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>> I lived there long before that and there was never a T-Junction in my time
>> Z. It stopped being the M3 just at an annoying little country dual carriageway through
>> Twyford down and a crossroads - Hockley lights.
I remember it as being a right left offset type of crossroads that made it feel like a T junction, with the traffic lights of course. I could be wrong.
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>> As for when it became joined up, well I know they started bulldozing in 92,
>> I think it was finally finished in 96, but I had left the UK long
>> before that so can't be exactly sure.
That sounds about right to me...I moved from Southampton to Reading at the end of ‘94 and the traffic lights were still there. I do recall it as a slightly staggered crossroads, but with the stagger being east west rather than north south, if that makes sense?
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 7 Nov 18 at 02:30
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The protests over the Twyford Down cutting substantially delayed completion of the Southern section of the M3 which was not complete until 1995.
I'm a lifelong fan of the New Forest and went out there quite often from my various house shares in Harrow area in early eighties. Sometimes solo and others with YHA mates.
I think route was A312* round Hayes to the A30 then past the Crooked Billet at Staines to part of the M25 then M3 which ended near Popham. Stretch on A303 then down to Chandlers Ford before eventually picking up M27 to Cadnam on edge of Forest.
*This road has been massively improved since I left the London area and now provides a very decent link from Heathrow to the A40 at Target roundabout. Don't though be tempted to 'cut the corner' to the Polish War Memorial roundabout if going west - it dumps you onto slow suburban roads.
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The future of motoring - 1964 - R.P.
