Wolseley – Driven To Write

Modern Family [Part Three]

Harriman’s Ladder.

Amongst the more striking aspects of BMC’s front-driven family of cars – if we set aside for a moment their technical courage – was the stark modernism of their design. Whether the Issigonis-inspired ADO series should be considered part of a design movement which would permeate the UK as the Sixties progressed – in architecture, product design, furnishing and in tentative forays amid the domestic automotive domain is perhaps a matter for more learned minds, but it nevertheless required a leap of imagination to Continue reading “Modern Family [Part Three]”

The Many Faces of Flour

The lesser-known Argentinian Farina variations.

Images: issuu.com and supermercedes.com.ar

The car you see before you here today is likely to be, for many at least, an unfamiliar member of the BMC Farina family, but it was a unique and interesting variation in its own right. Its story begins with one of Argentina’s greatest and most revered industrialists, an Italian immigrant named Torcuato di Tella (1892–1948), who had disembarked in Buenos Aires with his parents in 1895. At just eighteen years of age, di Tella developed and produced a dough-mixing machine which became very popular with bakeries across the country.

Before long, di Tella had extended his range of products to include gasoline pumps, refrigerators, washing machines and other household appliances, but S.I.A.M., the name of the manufacturing company he established in 1911, paid tribute to the product started it all: it is an acronym for ‘Sección Industrial Amasadoras Mecánicas’ or, in English, ‘Bread Making Machine Industries’. Continue reading “The Many Faces of Flour”

Wolseley’s Hot New Cleo Rs!

It sounds like “Clio” and shares every dimension with the Clio but Wolseley’s new small car contender is a design triumph, says Wolseley’s chief of design.

The resemblance is there right down to the very fact the Cleo vRS has a Wolseley badge perched on a diamond-shaped plinth on the car’s front grille. A similar diamond-recess on the rear boot holds the famed “W” symbol too. So, yes, it looks a bit like a Renault Clio. How shall we understand the design? “With this virtually unique car we have redefined the meaning of sporty practicality,” says Wolseley’s design chief Cristo Palumbo-Colombo. “It’s practical and sporty in a completely new way. It’s not compromised at all.”

Later he said “Every line is accurately placed and provokes in the viewer a sense of awed humility. Or an indefinable sense of joi de vivre – that is about the happiness of living, about satisfaction with one’s existence because every aspect of one’s life is so lovely. The Cleo’s stance is creative, surprising and original. The proportions can Continue reading “Wolseley’s Hot New Cleo Rs!”

Something Rebadged in Denmark

A 1977 Wolseley 18-22. As named, this car had a mayfly-brief production run. Why is it labelled a 1977 though?

1975 Wolseley 18-22 (registeded in 1977): source — 1975 Wolseley 18-22 (registered in 1977): source

Something quite like it could be purchased until 1982 (sold as an Austin Princess and Austin Princess 2 until 1981). And something quite like that appeared in showrooms from 1982 to 1984, the Austin Ambassador. They re-tooled the body and engineered a hatchback for 24 months of sales. That’s another story, British Leyland has plenty of those. Continue reading “Something Rebadged in Denmark”