• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Pourquoi viens-tu si tard ?

Share this page

HealeyRick said:
How can you say the rear seats in a Healey are useless when you can put Ann Margret back there?

Click to expand...

Guess you have a point but I am not triple jointed which is what I would need to be, to be in the back there with her. Noticed how she ran out of the Healey quickly to go to that trike?
 
Art imitating life? In Transformers, the dad was younger than the guy in the last post though.
 
Nothing like a new Healey fresh off the showroom floor equipped with a "Bermuda bell" to catch the eye of Judy Holliday:


Note the Austin dealership in Manhattan in the opening scene. Anyone know where it was located? I remember seeing Bermuda bells advertised in the J.C. Whitney catalog next to the wolf whistles and ah-oogah horns but have never seen one installed in a car. Here's one if you haven't seen it before:

 
HealeyRick said:
Note the Austin dealership in Manhattan in the opening scene. Anyone know where it was located?
Click to expand...

When I asked for the Heritage of my car there is a paragraph where it says Destination (Dealer) where the car was shipped to in 1963, and it was Inskip Inc. in New York, a company that still exists today. In fact I wanted to contact them to see if they still have the records to whom this car was sold to 51 years ago, just to know the history of the car... Don't know if they would share this info with all the data protection nowadays.


Anyway when looking for Inskip Inc. I found these:
01.jpg

06.jpg07.jpg

08.jpg

05.jpg
 
I looked for Inskip's showroom in Manhattan, but it didn't match up to the movie. A little more sleuthing found that Austin of England was located at 27-29 W. 57th St. in what was called "Austin House". If you look at the upper left of this still from Phffft! you'll see the last letters of the words "Austin House"

18ejo0.jpg


In this picture of the modernized building front you can still see the decorative features that appear above the words "Austin of England" in the movie:

n4hamr.jpg


Sadly, there won't be an opportunity to pose your 100 in front of the building to reenact the movie shot as "Austin House"is in the process of being demolished: https://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37574 If you have an interest in architecture, I recommend this history of the building: https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/the-1924-chickering-hall-no-27-29-west.html
 
Just to beat the "Austin House" story into the ground is this May 1, 1952 clip from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

"Austin Will Stay In U.S. Car Market " Director Declares " Leonard P. Lord. . chairman and managing director of the Austin Motor Company, Ltd, today commented on the favorable impact the Austin has made on the American market and stressed that his company is in the automobile field in the United States to stay. Lord spoke at the official opening of Austin House at 27-29 W, 57th St., Manhattan, new United States headquarters and showrooms. As evidence of determination to provide everything that the American public needs for permanent service, he said that Austin maintains a stock on the North American Continent"

We hear a lot about "product placement" in today's films, but it's obviously nothing new. Must have been a real publicity coup to get the Healey featured in a major motion picture like "Phffft!" just as it was being introduced to the market.
 
Back
Top