The lost world of scantily-clad women draped across automobiles at car shows and motor racing events.
This week, Rishi Sunak – Britain’s wishy-washy waste of space Prime Minister – has been desperately trying to capitalise on the discontent caused by the ULEZ (that’s Ultra Low Emission Zone) charges being imposed in London in an effort to reduce pollution by bigging up car ownership as something that needs to be defended at all costs. Talking as though we are still in the 1940s, Sunak claimed that car ownership – not just car ownership, but massively polluting car ownership – was a great aspiration for all families and an essential requirement in major cities that have (despite the best efforts of various governments) public transport systems that would work a lot more effectively if the roads were not clogged up with people who cannot travel more than a few feet without having to drive. Sunak clearly feels – probably quite rightly – that British car owners will only have their petrol-spewing vehicles taken from their cold, dead hands and by appeasing them, he can secure an electoral boost. He may be right.
As you may have guessed, I don’t drive. I have zero interest in cars. To me, they are boxes that have one purpose – to transport people from point A to point B. But I am aware that for many people – probably some of you people – cars hold a curious sex appeal. People lust after cars in a way that they don’t over any other mechanical object, even though the automobile seems to have ceased any attempt to be slick, modernist and futuristic in the last decade or two. Cars, to me, mostly look the same as each other and have done so for a very long time. But for the enthusiast, they hold a certain captivating fascination and lust that can be seen in showrooms and on the street – just yesterday, there was a group of fecklessly wealthy youths across the road from us admiring a garishly green topless monstrosity as though it was a page 3 girl.
I make that comparison deliberately. Ever since the motor car became something that was an object of desire for its appearance rather than its function, it has been tied to the glamour girl. That both emerged around the same time is coincidental but significant. The car became a regular prop for the pin-up girl just as the pin-up girl became a prop for cars at trade shows, public shows and racing events. I can understand why glamour girls were draped over cars as a selling point – I mean, as we’ve explored at length on this site, glamour girls could be roped into selling anything. I have to say, however, that these poses were often awkward – the poor model trying to look sultry while also trying not to slide off the hood of the vehicle – and you have to wonder why, if cars are as sexy and desirable as people like to think, they needed the additional arousal factor of a scantily-clad young woman?
Perhaps the inspired sleeve notes for the 1980s VHS release Fast Cars and Beautiful Women have the answer:
“In this world of compromised values, light beer, low-cal desserts and gas-saving sports cars, there are two things that will remain eternally appealing to men – fast, powerful, exotic sports cars and beautiful, sexy women.”
It strikes me that this blurb, written back in the 1980s, feels very pertinent today. It perhaps explains why so many people of a certain age feel threatened by and aghast at electric cars and are so determined to cling on to petrol and diesel-spewing vehicles as a matter of principle – it’s some sort of macho thing, a line in the sand in a Woke society where many men, once so sure of their own importance, no longer know their place and are accused of toxic masculinity if they don’t toe a line they barely understand. It’s a confusing world for chaps of a certain age and perhaps being told that your car is a dinosaur that is fit only for the scrapheap feels like a strangely personal attack. And goddammit, they’ve already taken away the glamour girls, who are now persona non grata at auto shows (at least in the UK – manufacturers selling in less PC countries still feel happy to drape women over their new models as a way of enhancing the sex appeal of the car).
As with so much else in the glamour girl world, it does feel as though the car show models are being saved from themselves by people who are much cleverer than they are and have decided what is good for them, what sort of work women can or cannot do and what kind of body image is acceptable today – which all feels oddly like the sort of sexist, controlling behaviour that these campaigners claim to be combatting. I’m not saying that half-naked women draped across the latest Nissan car is something that is necessary – but equally, it probably isn’t dangerous either unless you want to control all expressions of sexuality other than the ones you approve of. Hey, we’re not sexist – by all means, have half-naked men doing the same to appeal to female customers if you think that might work. Have trans models. Fuck, just modernise it however you choose without moralising about it. But like I said, I have no interest in cars so this is not a fight I have any real interest in beyond our never-ending fascination with the glamour girls of yesteryear and the way sex used to be used to sell everything.
Which, not before time, leads to the main point of this rambling piece – a collection of vintage photos featuring dolly birds draped over motor cars. Very much of their time and subsequently marvellous. Vroom, vroom!
DAVID FLINT
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