A couple of weeks ago I had a bit of a clear out whilst reorganising my library and the time has come to dispose of a number of items which may be of interest through my lightpress account on e-bay.

Among the ads from the French Connaissance des arts I’ve posted this week is this Alitalia airlines ad featuring an ALFA Romeo 1300 GT Z and a Rolls Royce Conway Turbofan engine of the type used to power the Alitalia McDonnell Douglas DC8. While my folks were living in Africa I spent many hours traveling back and forth to school in England on Alitalia DC8’s. Confusingly the strap line for the ad reads “Team Alitalia: Alfa Romeo, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce” making reference to both jet engine manufacturers used to power Alitalia aircraft.

The MATRA M530 was desined by Philippe Guédon 1965 to replace the René Bonnet designed MATRA Djet. Named after the MATRA 530R air to air missile and launched in 1967 with a Ford Taunus V4 the M530 was given a mild facelift by Michelotti in 1970 and called the MATRA 530 LX.

Looking for information about the SAAB 99 I was fascinated to discover that an early prototype of the model had a “daihatsu” badge on the bonnet/hood in an effort to disguise the true identity of the car from prying journalists. The strap line on this ad reads “Saab 99: You do not know this car, but you already know his name”

Finally in 1971 Rover introduced a four speed manual gearbox option for the hitherto automatic transmission only Rover 3500, all vehicles with this option are known as Rover 3500 S models, with the S denoting “Synchromesh”. The strap line for the ad reads “We would never have dared to say it ourselves” before going on to quote Jean Bernardet presumably from an article that appeared in L’Equipe on the model.

Thanks for joining me on this “Swedish Daihatsu ?” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !