Chrysler Alpine - Everything you've ever wanted, in one beautiful car.

Economy: up to 38.5mpg overall touring. Style: modern aerodynamic design. Comfort for five adults, with carpets, cloth upholstery, superb heating and ventilation, sound-proofing and excellent front wheel drive road holding.

The versatility of an opening rear door, and a folding rear seat to give you 49cu. ft. of carrying space.

The reliability of a proven engine and suspension. Lively performance: the Alpine S gives top speeds of up to 102mph. Many built-in safety features, including dual-line servo-assisted braking and much more.

And Alpine is the only car in its class with electronic ignition, for instant starting even in cold and wet, and consistent ignition performance to cut down maintenance costs.

All this - plus 'The Protector' - 12 months' unlimited mileage warranty with free replacement of certain major parts should they wear out during the warranty period.

Test drive the Alpine today.

Are you a Chrysler enthusiast? Restoring an Alpine? Want a copy of this advert for your garage wall? Have a look in my shop for related items!

The Mk1 VW Golf - For all AA Patrolmen who haven't seen it yet.

We're not seriously suggesting our cars never break down.
(A Volkswagen's only human after all.)
But we do have something of a name for reliability.
A reputation that continues to thrive with the Volkswagen Golf.
And so it should.
It's built to our usual, unusually high standards.
Those we've been practising on our Beetle for more than 30 years.
We spend 16 hours putting each car together. Inspecting it every nut and bolt of the way.
And what happends when it does eventually roll off the production line?
We inspect it all over again.
Each and every car undergoes a rigorous 239 point quality check.
That way, if something falls off in anyone's hand, it's our hand.
Not yours.
So you see, even on the new Volkswagens we can still tell our reliability story.
A fact that might even tempt any AA man reading into buying one.
After all, when you fix cars for a living, the last thing you want to do in your spare time is fix cars.

Have a look in my shop for a high quality reprint of this advert along with other VW automobilia.

Brat!

Before the birth of the Impreza legend in the 1990s Subaru was primarily known for making semi-obscure cars and pickups. The quirky flat-four engines and four wheel drive throughout the range didn't really attract much attention in the UK when everyone seemingly wanted Cortinas and Cavaliers.



They were popular with farmers though, the advantages of all wheel drive all too clear across muddy fields and when towing, in fact the only Subarus I can remember seeing at all in the 1980s were in rural areas such as North Wales.



The pickup variant was perhaps the most stylish truck on the market in that sector at the time. The rear pillar swooping into the truck bed was clearly influenced by the American Chevrolet El Camino and Ford Ranchero. It was quite different to the rival offerings which showed little imagination at all, brutally hacking their body shapes vertically just behind the front seats and nailing on flat set of side panels to surround the bed. I have to admit that I'd nearly forgotten all about the MV until I saw one recently.



They were called the "Brat" in America and marketed as a lifestyle recreational vehicle, it's a shame that they weren't sold in the same way here as we may have rather more of them around today if they had been.

The Frenchman and his Ferrari 365 GT4 2+2

It's wrong to judge by appearances but he really did look as though he should have been behind the wheel of a Range Rover Sport, or maybe one of the current line-up from Aston Martin. But fair play to the man with the long blonde hair (the sort that looks effortlessly dishevelled but you just know costs more in maintenance per month than an average old car) because he was behind the wheel of one of my favourite Ferraris and he looked as though he was loving it.

I'm not really a Ferrari guy. As a fully qualified Petrolhead I naturally understand what they are about and I'll always take time to have a good look if I see one parked up, but they rank far below the likes of Porsche and Aston on my list. There are three, however, that I absolutely adore. The Daytona, the Testarossa, and the 365/400/412.



The expensive Frenchman (I assume he was French, we were in France and the car was on French plates) showed fabulous taste with his 365 GT4 2+2. Pininfarina did a wonderful job of shaping this front-engined GT mile-muncher, elegant lines effortlessly disguising the bulk (as big as a Jaguar XJ6) but still retaining some sporty schoolboy-delighting detailing in the form of the pop-up headlamps and trademark twin round tails.

The bronze paint shone gloriously in the sunshine and the exhausts barked as he accelerated off the Autoroute and up the slip road. I hope he was on his way to somewhere suitably glamorous.