How to sell a Grand Tourer to the young generation

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A former car concessionaire once told us the entertaining anecdote of an alleged celebrity contacting him with the question: what would you be prepared to spend on me driving one of your cars? The spokesman promptly answered: I’d be prepared to pay you if you won’t! How different this must have been some decades earlier? Product placement hadn’t been properly invented but motor manufacturers began to see the usefulness of famous people arriving at music studios and film sets in their vehicles…

Jensen Motors Ltd had their big C-V8 on offer at the time and were eager to show it in the hands of an antiques dealer slash undercover agent working for the British Diplomatic Intelligence Services in The Baron. Just the ticket. But the other side of the celebrity spectrum needed fulfilment, too. Enter the then 25-year old girl seen above, who’d just scored a UK hit with this song. An unlikely combination it may have seemed, but Susan Maughan supposedly drove the big Jensen for quite a while.

(Words & archive picture Jeroen Booij)

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