It's quite true that Sir John Black's wife had her own thoughts on suitable
colours for cars. A
recent conversation I had with her youngest son, Nick, did put the kybosh on
the allegation of her
colour blindness. Seemingly she wasn't CB at all!
But the CEO's wife's involvement in colour choice only really goes as far as
1954, this being the
year that Black was ousted by the Main Board and was possibly on his own, in
terms of being with his
former wife.
>From that point forwards, colour choices became a joint Engineering and
>Marketing responsibility.
However, there was one outpost where a wife's imagination was brought to bear
on product offerings.
Jock Brown, (former Chief Inspector) and later General Manager of the London
Sales and Service
Division was very active in making special car types - based on the Herald and
Vitesse (Sports 6).
Mrs Brown certainly came up with some delightful colour combos and my favourite
was a duotone silver
and metallic light grey on a Vitesse Coupe. Her other blend of brilliant White
and metallic Wedgwood
Blue with black or grey interiors. There were other delightful colour combos as
well. IMHO, the
Vitesse Coupe was arguably the prettiest car I ever remember seeing. I've
always thought the Herald
Coupe was infinitely more eye-appealing than other Herald derivatives and Jock
Brown's offering was
superb. The Vitesse could be ordered with various stages of performance tune,
using factory
components. Equally, Jock's variations of Heralds always had Spitfire engines,
overdrive gearboxes
on the three top speeds and wire wheels of a wider than normal section. All
these cars were made to
special order only and by todays values were cheap. But my favourite, the
Vitesse Coupe, was several
hundred pounds more than Standard-Triumph's most expensive car, the 2.5PI
Estate (Wagon). Therefore
totally out of reach financially for an impoverished car salesman in the
company's only showroom :)
Jonmac
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