A press car. Who knew?

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A press car. Who knew?

Postby billy_bunter » Fri Jan 24, 2020 8:24 pm

Came across this on another forum. Maybe the new owner knows already. Maybe they do not. Hopefully already in the register with relevant info....

Whatever it was a good spot.....

Thought this may interest a few people, this is more of a "the one that got away" moment. I found this a couple a months ago, it's been sold now but the listing is still up on Car & Classic:

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It's a '78 Viva GLS, which I quite liked the look of. Nice beige interior, original paint. After it was sold, I took my eye off it, and continued looking at other HC Vivas for sale.

Now to the present. Whilst I was looking through eBay listings for old car magazines, I came across an edition of Autocar from February 1979, which caught my eye as it had a Renault 18TS on the cover. Looking through the photos that the seller had put up I came across a page which had a picture of the 1979 Vauxhall range.

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As shown, all the cars have AVS plates which caught my eye. I remembered seeing something which also had an AVS registration a few months back, so I searched through a folder of mine which had pictures of cars for sale that caught my eye, & realised that AVS 39T was part of the Vauxhall press fleet at one point, as seen in this promotional photo!

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I'm always quite interested in press cars, and I have seen a few come and go on eBay and other websites, so missing the chance to buy this one has annoyed me a bit, if only I knew then! The listing didn't state that it was ex-press car funny enough, & I couldn't find any different photos after searching up the reg number, so I wonder if the new owner knows about it's past.
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Re: A press car. Who knew?

Postby 1972nail » Fri Jan 24, 2020 8:46 pm

That's an interesting blog. The register already has it noted as a car in that photo, although the only photo or report of of it as a 'press' car are on the advert in that magazine AFIK. Many of the other cars have had the plates added to make up the sequence for the photo rather than actually registered with those plates.

The car may well have been a Vauxhall staff car used for the photo rather than car which the press used for test driving.
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"When you have a Firenza like mine, who needs any Minis?" copyright David Maxwell 1979.
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