Time Capsule custom Marina discovered

Reg check shows it's a 1.8

flashbak.com/days-of-the-shaggin-wagon-a-look-at-1970s-custom-vans-33431/

Great article and pictures of the 70's custom vans - Where their inspiration came from ....

Double post

For me this falls right onto the bullseye of my own chosen description for this sort of thing.... council estate customs.

Personally I don't think it really matters whether it's good or bad by today's standards. I think what's important is that this kind of thing happened and it's an important cultural artefact that tells us a lot about the era which created it. This belongs in a museum of working class culture.

I grew up on council estates where everybody's dad was working on something like this. Doing the best they could on a low wage, using a cheap car that nobody else wanted, trying to create their dream out of British tin, inspired by the US custom car scene that they saw in movies and magazines.

I think it's a beautiful thing personally. This is a creative expression by somebody who a very limited palette to work from. I'm willing to bet this was a working class person with arguably a rudimentary working class education that had specifically guided him/her towards trade apprenticeships and manual labor. S/He was not invited to make any other cultural or creative contributions to society. There was no option to be a creative anything... you just had to be a grunt worker running a machine in a factory - that was your life mapped out: Press operator, council flat, twelve kids, rising damp. This car comes from the days of the old class system where you were told to know your place in the social heirarchy, and careers advisors wouldn't listen to your aspirations they'd just tell you to sign up for an industrial apprenticeship at the local factory or get down the labour market and find a job.

This was somebody's pride and passion, and an escape from that destiny. This was many hours spent in a garage making a sketched-up version of a far far greater vision in their minds, using any available material to achieve it. It's like junk modelling. In his/her mind this was a fantastical vision of independence, individuality and the open road, but in reality it had to be realised via an old Marina, some chain, some carpet offcuts and haberdashery, and some horse shoes. Imagine how many hours S/He spent thinking about this, dreaming about building the most awesome car imaginable, and then improvising out of necessity to get as close as possible to that vision which reflected the way they thought about themselves in spite of the way society graded them. It's a document of somebody's personal exploration of self esteem and pride.

In the end that determination to self-express becomes self defeating because you can only model a crude approximation of your vision, and so everybody sniggers at the council estate loser with his plop tasteless car that's now plastered with horse shoes and chain.

I spent a lot of my youth with people who did this sort of stuff - the dads of my school friends. I also knew people whose dads could afford to drive a brand new cars. But it was these kinds of people who would let you sit in their cars, would take you for a drive, would tell you all about it and what they were doing because they loved it and they wanted to share their enthusiasm with anyone who was interested. The people who could afford nice cars would tell you not to touch them.

My dad was a sales rep so he had a new company car every two years. The kids in our street were always told not to go near it. My dad's fancy company cars were never anywhere near as cool or interesting as the tat my friend's dads were working on. Tat like this Marina.

You don't have to like it, but I believe it deserves some respect.

Honestly, if I could, I would.

I'd photograph every inch of it as it stands in a white infinity studio with nice lights for documenting, then maybe consider washing it to see what's underneath.

=)

Is it for sale then?

silly me missed that post.

I see it's only located in Burton - I wonder if BA stands for Burton Albion.

Bid placed. Hopefully I'll get outbid else I'll be looking for a divorce solicitor.

If i do win i'd wash it / polish it / pump tyres up / replace horse shoes with spike bolts then hope it starts and runs okay then see where it goes.

Would of had a cheeky bid but at £310 already it's already at more than I'd be willing to gamble on it 😆